International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18
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Mark Ward (SF), Dublin Mid-West

I have said before that rushed legislation makes for poor legislation. I was on the justice committee when it was agreed unanimously right across the committee that we would give as much time as possible to debate the EU asylum and migration pact and the legislation we are talking about today. It was agreed on a cross-party basis by members of the Minister's party, of his colleague's party and all the Government parties - that we would have a robust debate in the committee rather than coming in here and speaking for an eight-hour debate today and probably next week as well until the guillotine comes, which I expect it will at some stage.
As my colleague said, it is absolutely bonkers that we received the amendments as late as we did and that we had to put amendments in before Second Stage was even completed. It is the wrong way of doing things. As Opposition, it does not give us time to research it. We do not have the same capacity that Government Ministers have with their teams of staff. I see officials beside the Minister. We do not have that facility. We have to research and look at all that information ourselves. We do not have reams and reams of staff to do this.
The common-sense amendment that has been disallowed merely asked the Minister to do something simple to prepare for the enactment of this legislation. As we have heard before, fail to prepare and prepare to fail. We heard yesterday at a committee meeting that civil legal aid services are bursting at the seams already. They have not had any increases in fees since 2008. They simply will not be able to deal with any extra pressure that is going to be put on them as a result of this Bill. There is nothing here to deal with the vacancies in international protection. We are looking for the Minister to be able to prepare for that. That is all we were asking for in the amendment that has been ruled out of order.
We do not know whether the provision of accommodation will be adequate. That needs to be prepared for. In my area of South Dublin County Council, we have the highest number of people staying in international protection in the whole State. There are 4,200 people there at the moment and it is bursting at the seams. It seems that because the Government is adopting the EU asylum and migration pact, this rush is about being the best boys in Europe and going straight into Europe and saying "yes, we will do what we are told". We will doff the cap and get on with it. That is no way to do it. We are a sovereign State and we should be able to look after our own rules and regulations when it comes to situations like this.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-18