International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West As the Minister knows, the vast majority of people in the country want an asylum process that provides help to those who need help and returns home those who do not need help. That should be the basis and logic of any asylum system - one that offers compassion to those who are fleeing war and violence but one where common sense is used in the system for those who are trying to use the asylum process for economic reasons. One of my major problems with this particular Bill is that it only deals with the sideshow in terms of the numbers of people coming into the country. The vast majority of people coming into the country are coming from Britain, through the North of Ireland and into this State. At least 85% are coming that way. In the last parliamentary question I asked the Minister, he said he did not know and he did not have that information. --- 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/2026-02-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-18