International Protection
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-04
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James Geoghegan (FG), Dublin Bay South

I thank the Minister of State for this very comprehensive reply given on behalf of the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan. The challenge, as we await new legislation and what seems to be a new announcement I had not seen before, is that age assessment will be governed by regulations pursuant to this new legislation, the International Protection Bill, but the number of unaccompanied minors does not appear to be on the decline. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. The risks will continue to rise and while I understand every effort has been made to initiate and get this Bill through - perhaps even in the first half of next year - as the Minister of State knows, it will take time to commence relevant provisions and for the determining authority to be established. It will take time to ensure the appropriate staff are resourced and, if there is a more prescriptive measure in terms of how age is to be assessed, to ensure training would accompany such regulations. All of that is welcome but will take a lot of time. It is important the Minister for justice indicates what will happen on an interim basis, pending the introduction of this new regime. It seems Tusla is very concerned about this issue and about its responsibilities in ensuring it is protecting every person who is presumed to be a child when he or she arrives to Tusla as an unaccompanied minor. Then, on the other side of the equation, there is the issue of where Tusla may have identified somebody as not being a child who enters into adult services but it is later proven that person is a child and remitted to child services. This is a very complex area and I think interim approaches are necessary.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:25+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-04