Delays in the processing of applications, a lack of transparency in the appeals system and the inability of asylum-seekers to gain employment are all issues that need urgent government action, they say.

While ministers Dermot Ahern and Michael McDowell both claimed last week that the Irish asylum process is among the best in the world, campaigners have claimed that Ireland comes bottom of the table when ranked on several criteria.

Not only is Ireland the only country in the west not to publish decisions on asylum applications, but Ireland and Denmark are the only countries in the EU not to allow asylum-seekers to enter employment.

The refusal of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT) to publish its verdicts was criticised in the High Court last year when Justice MacMenamin ruled that the failure to allow asylum applicants access to prior decisions "cannot accord with the principles of natural and constitutional justice, fairness of procedure or equality of aims having regard to the importance and significance of the issues to the applicants which fall to be determined in this quasi-judicial process".

The RAT has since published 22 decisions, although these were selected by the appeals tribunal itself. The Irish Refugee Council has accused the RAT of hiding behind "a veil of secrecy, deciding what they would like the public to see".

The apparent lack of transparency within the system means that there are no statistics available to show the differences between the decisions of various members of the tribunal. However, statistics collated by the Refugee Legal Service a year ago show that barrister James Nicholson rejected over 95% of the 400 appeals he heard.

Legal sources have told the Sunday Tribune that lawyers have little faith in the fairness of the appeals process, with decisions depending largely on which of the RAT's 35 members hears a case. A report by the Human Rights Centre in Galway, published three years ago, found that just 13% of lawyers appearing before the RAT see consistency between the judgments delivered by different members.

Not all members of the RAT are satisfied with existing procedures.

Last December, two members of the tribunal, barristers Sunniva McDonagh and Doreen Shivnan, resigned in a dispute that is believed to have been about the lack of transparency in the process.

The two barristers were also critical of the tribunal's chairman, John Ryan.

The RAT was established in 2000 under the 1996 Refugee Act to hear appeals against initial decisions on refugee status by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner.

While it is standard practice internationally to hold such hearings behind closed doors so as to protect the identity of the asylumseeker, Ireland's failure to publish decisions or statistics relating to the process is unique.