Out-of-hours GP service, SouthDoc, may be forced to cut the number of its treatment centres because of funding pressures and doctor shortages.

The number of non-EEA nationals coming to Ireland to study almost doubled in a recent five-year period.

The number of international degree students coming to Ireland has reached a new high but non-European students are reporting difficulties finding employment and accommodation.

Almost 150 asylum seekers have been living in direct provision centres for seven years or more.

The “splintered” governance of An Garda Síochána means the “buck stops nowhere”, an expert report on the Department of Justice has said.

The number of people deported from the country fell significantly last year, according to new figures.

Returning Irish migrants whose partner is not a native of the EU could be adversely affected by the reversal of a recent ruling on cohabitation requirements.

Just 130 applicants for the Immigrant Investor Programme have been approved since 2012.

There are serious security concerns at Garda headquarters at revelations of a sophisticated people-smuggling operation at Dublin Airport.

Only 10 inspections have been carried out on English language schools despite promises of closer scrutiny following multiple closures and the disappearance of students’ money.

Members of the public, and perhaps people facing deportation, are being targeted by a sophisticated telephone scam that extracts money.

The Department of Justice last year paid two airlines over €150,000 to deport Africa-bound failed asylum seekers on four flights out of Dublin.

The number of people in the country’s shamed direct provision system has increased, despite two damning reports into its failings.

Eleven people have been arrested after a crackdown on so-called sham marriages.

The crisis-hit Department of Justice is facing a second year with no permanent senior civil servant at its helm as candidates run scared of taking over the job.

A private language school estimated to owe its overseas students up to €500,000 has applied for voluntary liquidation despite proposing, at the time of its shock closure last November, to reopen this week.

Almost €25m allocated to the Department of Justice went unspent last year, including €2.4m on the troubled State Pathology facility, about €700,000 on domestic and sexual violence budgets, and more than €100,000 on unfilled vacancies in the Garda Inspectorate.

Dublin Airport is in talks with justice chiefs over plans to expand automatic e-gate passport and border controls.

Civilian staff are to replace gardaí at border control checkpoints around the country.

Damage done to Ireland’s international image by rogue language schools has forced a clampdown on the foreign student sector, ministers have revealed.

Parents of up to 80 trainee pilots, who lost up to €80,000 each when a Waterford pilot training college went bust, are livid at how the Government rallied to help out language school students yet left their children high and dry.

The cost of meeting judicial reviews taken by asylum seekers and other legal costs totalled €5.8 million last year — and was paid by the State’s Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS).

Hundreds of foreign students left in limbo by English language school closures are to be offered alternative programmes at major discounts by other providers.

Student representatives say Government plans to enforce standards in English language schools will not be enough to ease the plight of hundreds of overseas students affected by recent college closures.

Some English language schools have abused their status to act as fronts for people seeking work in Ireland, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has warned.

Hundreds of foreign students facing massive debts after an English-language college in Dublin closed without warning have been hit with a second scandal — the college never registered them as immigrants.

Efforts are being made by government departments to help students affected by the closure of a number private international colleges in Dublin.

Scores of children were among the members of immigrant families who have been DNA-tested in the past two years.

Immigrants have been targeted in a phone scam by criminals seeking to make them pay a “fine” of €500.

There was a flurry of excitement when it emerged Edward Snowden applied to Ireland for asylum, but it may not have been a wise move, says Noel Baker.

Irish airline passengers and dozens of European countries will be allowed to check themselves through immigration in a new self-service border control.

A judge has cleared the way for a High Court challenge by a Belarusian man refused naturalisation over an apparent passport glitch.

The threat of closure is hanging over a number of government offices moved from Dublin in the decentralisation initiative.

The family of Nigerian taxi driver Moses Ayanwole have been told by the Department of Justice that he can become an Irish citizen — almost two months after he died.

One of these days Moses and his wife Olusola should have been getting into the car parked outside their front door and driving to a ceremony where they would have celebrated being granted Irish citizenship. Times, however, are very different now.

The number of asylum seekers wanting refugee status has fallen to a 15-year low.

FOR the past four years, Halima Usman and her nine-year-old daughter have been dreaming about shutting the door for the last time on their asylum seeker residential housing in north Cork.

THE number of people claiming asylum in this country fell to levels not observed since the mid-’90s, the Justice Minister has said.

THE cost to the state of delivering asylum services is expected to reach €206m for 2008 and less again for last year.

THOUSANDS of immigrants are terrified they could yet lose their eligibility for citizenship after they found themselves unable to renew their residency permits over the past six weeks.

ASYLUM application numbers are down by over a third, but the cost of processing the claims is growing, according to new figures released by Fine Gael.

AT least 50 applications for change of residency status by non-EU nationals married to Irish people have been turned down by immigration officials over suspicions that they are “marriages of convenience”.

ON last Tuesday morning, on behalf of a work colleague, I rang the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) to obtain clarification of a letter he had received.