International Protection Bill 2026: Second Stage (Resumed)
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-10
============================================================

Aidan Farrelly (SD), Kildare North

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on the Bill before us today. As I start, I acknowledge that we all speak on important issues like this from a place of bias. Personal experience, our values and our world views all incorporate much of what we say on these issues. I spent a great deal of time as a youth worker working in direct provision settings with children and young people. While I speak about this issue, I am speaking about it with those children and young people in mind, people whom I came to know and care so much about.
The first question I will put to the Minister is: why does the principle of the best interest of the child not underpin this Bill? In fact, all the provisions for the best interests of the child in the EU pact have not been transposed into this Bill. Why not? I am happy to give way if the Minister would like to answer that now.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-10