International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South I thank colleagues for their contributions. I recognise this is a very considerable piece of legislation. As some other colleague as indicated, it is the most important reform of Ireland's asylum laws in the State's history. The criticism is that it is being rushed. I will inform Members about the history of this legislation and how we have got to today and take on board some of the criticisms that have been made. In April 2025, I published the general scheme of the International Protection Bill. After that, I requested detailed pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme, which the justice committee, of which Deputy Carthy is Chair, did. It called in a lot of witnesses. The Bill was given careful consideration by the members of the justice committee and, as a result, they produced a report that contained a series of recommendations. At the outset, it is important to say the work of pre-legislative scrutiny on the general scheme of the Bill was done thoroughly by the justice committee. That having been done, the Bill that is before us now was published, having got a stamped copy from the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. We had three days of Second Stage debate on that Bill in the House earlier this month. In fact, on the third day, frankly, we ran out of speakers, not only from the Opposition but also from the Government, so no one can dispute but that we had an absolutely thorough and extensive debate on the legislation on Second Stage. We have now come for Committee Stage. Everyone who is interested in this legislation knows that Committee Stage of this Bill was going to be a lengthy process if it went to the justice committee and the justice committee was required to deal with it in its orthodox way. The justice committee has a huge amount of work on its agenda. I know that because I send it a lot of the work. Frankly, the justice committee having to deal with Committee Stage of this legislation in the orthodox manner in which it deals with these processes would have taken an inordinate period of time. That is merely my assessment in respect of it. That is why a decision was made to have Committee Stage taken on the floor of the House. We are going to have a very thorough consideration of amendments that have been put forward by colleagues on Committee Stage, which has been allotted eight hours today and which, as has been indicated, will go on to next Wednesday as well. No doubt there may be some disadvantages to Committee Stage of a Bill not being dealt with in the committee room, but there are also some advantages to it being dealt with on the floor of the Dáil. For instance, there are colleagues here who want to speak or can come in and address amendments. They have done so already and no doubt that will be done further throughout the day. I also have to be frank about something else. We can talk about the issue of sovereignty, and Deputy Carthy's first three amendments deal with the issue of sovereignty. This is Irish sovereignty in operation. The elected members of the Irish people are in the elected Chamber, debating legislation and determining what laws we want to introduce into this country for the purpose of reforming asylum laws. That is sovereignty. As Deputy Carthy will be aware, the Irish people voted on a series of occasions, and they have put it into Article 29 of the Constitution, that we would also permit ourselves to be part of the European Union and to be bound by regulations or directives that were part of the Union as well. A decision was made, and a vote was held in an exercise of Irish sovereignty and Irish democracy, in the previous Dáil that said we were going to participate in the European Union regulations and directives that were seeking to reform migration within the European Union. We voted on that in this House. That is democracy. That is the sovereignty of the Irish people being exercised. The reason the majority voted for that in this House is that there is a recognition that if we want to reform migration in the 21st century, it has to be done on a broad, multinational basis. We have seen what has happened in the United Kingdom when they decided they wanted to go on their own in seeking to respond to the issues of migration that concern the United Kingdom. Migration is a really powerful phenomenon of the 21st century. When the history of the 21st century is written, migration will be, I would have thought, one of the dominant themes of it. If we want to respond to migration for asylum purposes, my belief and the belief of the majority of the former Dáil and, I believe, this Dáil is that we have to do it on an EU basis. That brings me to the fact that we all know that within the European Union there has been an agreement among the member states that are participating in this that this process is going to commence on 12 June next. We can pretend that is not the case but it is the case. Ireland takes is obligations extremely seriously and we want to ensure that we are ready and that the legislation is in place by 12 June next because that is the commitment. That is the agreed date by which all members states that are participating in these regulations and directives have said they will be ready. If it is the case that we have to be ready by 12 June, obviously there are time pressures on the legislation. There is no point stating that there are not. However, the fact that there are time pressures on it does not mean we cannot have a thorough and detailed debate in respect of it. A total of 267 amendments have been put down for Committee Stage. I thank and commend colleagues, because the majority of them come from Opposition Deputies. I want to go through them and engage with them. That does not mean I have to support them, but I want to discuss and debate them. The sooner we start that process, the better. In fairness, the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, Deputy Quaide, was not here at the start of the debate on this question. Deputy Carthy's first amendment was ruled out of order. His second, third and fourth amendments also concerned the issue of sovereignty. They should be moved and I will respond to them. Alternatively, if this is a general discussion or debate about section 1, I have said what I wanted to say in response to my colleagues, but we will have time today and next week to discuss this in these Houses to ensure we get it right. --- 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