International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan I do not know if people do not hear, do not understand or refuse to recognise what has been said. I would argue that Sinn Féin is probably the only party represented in this House that has accepted the will of the people in every referendum. The parties of Government did not accept the will of the people in respect of the first Nice and Lisbon treaty referendums and held a second vote in each case. Sinn Féin campaigned in those referendums and was on the losing side. We accepted the will of the Irish people. That does not mean that we forget the basis on which those referendums were won and how that applies to the amendments I am putting forward. Categoric assurances were provided to the Irish people in terms of the sovereignty that would be handed over. The Constitution provides that the State can cede sovereignty to the European Union, but that happens when it is in our interest to do so and the logic is that we need to do it on the basis that we have to collaborate with others. Of course we accept that there are some issues which are so big that we can only have a meaningful impact in terms of addressing them if we work on a pan-European and wider multilateral basis, where possible. Nobody will champion the UN, for example, more than our party. For all its flaws, it is the best hope humanity has. In respect of the European Union, we have to deal with things on a case-by-case basis and analyse the detail and logic behind any decision because that is what the Irish people mandated. That was the basis of Protocol 21 in the Lisbon treaty and why it was so important. That it is why it is so disappointing that the Government is simply abandoning Protocol 21 and the logic by which it which was put in place. It is being disingenuous in that regard. The Minister of State spoke about being honest and suggested we are an anti-EU party. That is a trope that has been thrown out for the past ten or 15 years. Anybody who analyses my record in the European Parliament and that of other Sinn Féin MEPs will know that we support European measures when they are in Ireland's best interests and oppose them when they are not. We will not make any apologies for that. That is what Irish representatives should do, and do so proudly, because I do not think anybody in the House advocates for a Brexit-type scenario whereby we withdraw entirely from the European Union as Britain did. Likewise, I will reject the suggestion that there is a binary choice between Brexit or EU integration on steroids. That is not the choice the State has. The choice is about how we engage with the European Union and what measures of integration we support. As I said, this should be based on our what is in our interest and what we need to collaborate on. Amendment No. 2 refers clearly to these Houses, the elected representatives of the people who make decisions in respect of migration policy. Amendment No. 3 states that the Government would provide a report to the Houses. It is interesting to note that the Minister mentioned the forerunners to the EU asylum and migration pact. He is correct. We signed up to a number of directives and regulations, but we did not sign up to all of them. The Minister of State has never answered the question on the disadvantage we faced by not signing up to the precursors to the directives and regulations that Sinn Féin opposed on this occasion. At an EU-wide level, we signed up to the forerunner for information sharing, Eurodac, and the forerunner of rights to reply, the Dublin regulations the Minister of State mentioned. We have never signed up to an EU-wide system in respect of the processing of applications, standards and conditions because of the common travel area. The Government parties at the time wanted to say that they were doing something on migration and signed us up lock, stock and barrel with no consideration given to other issues. A political propaganda judgment was made, as opposed to a considered political decision in respect of what was in Ireland's best interests. I accept the points made by Deputy O'Gorman. If people were really serious about dealing with migration, in particular forced migration for those seeking international protection, they would want a multilateral framework which deals with the causes. They would want to end conflicts and deal with climate change and gross economic inequalities internationally. It is again ironic that some of those who are most vociferous in terms of articulating an anti-migrant position are the same people who would be most resistant and hostile to measures aimed at ending conflict and dealing with climate change or addressing economic inequalities. That is different. Dealing on a multilateral basis with all of those issues is crucially important and Sinn Féin will support measures in that respect. That is different to tying people's hands behind their back. I am deeply disappointed. The Minister of State gave me a little bit of false hope in how he presented his reply because I thought he was going to accept our amendment on the common travel area. That was naïveté on my part because I thought for a moment that we would have a constructive engagement. Let us be very clear what we are asking the Government to do. The amendment simply asks the Government to prepare and publish an assessment on the potential and actual impacts of the common travel area arising from this Act, and the mitigating measures to address those areas at regular intervals, and not exceeding three years. It is not a burdensome task. It is not one of these cases where we call on the Department to produce a report and as soon as it is finished producing one report, it is working on another one. It is simply stating that the Houses will be informed as to how this is impacting and that is really important. Could the Minister of State outline precisely what proportion of applicants seeking international protection are coming from the common travel area? I can cite five different figures given by different Ministers. The truth is the Government does not know. It does not know - and we will be dealing with this in a later amendment - because it does not compile statistics and analyses as to where people are actually coming from in terms of international protection. We know who applies at ports and airports and it is assumed by the Government that everybody else who has not applied for international protection at the ports and airports has come across the Border. It has no way of knowing that. It does not know how many within our IPAS system came here for other reasons - in some cases legitimate reasons such as on tourist, employment or student visas despite international evidence suggesting a proportion of IPAS applicants came for those reasons. It is mind-boggling that the Government does not gather that statistical analysis but then it is completely disingenuous to use its failure to gather that statistical information to state that a certain number is coming from across the Border. I accept that a large proportion probably does come from the common travel area. Therefore, it is inexcusable that the Government has no mention of the common travel area in this legislation dealing with international protection. We say that a certain proportion - more than 80%, according to most Government Ministers - are coming from the common travel area and there is no reference to it whatsoever in a Bill that is 230 pages long. As regards the one amendment that actually accounts for the common travel area, the Government has indicated it will not accept it. Likewise, the Minister mentioned he has had many engagements with his British counterparts in respect of the common travel area and international protection. Before Members vote on this amendment, it is important that the Minister of State gives a report on what has actually been achieved. What concrete measures have been achieved, particularly in respect of the need for a bilateral arrangement with the British Government? This is the worst of every world because we are dealing in the first instance with a divided island and two separate States. Not only is the Northern State outside of the common travel area, migration matters are not devolved matters. Even if the Assembly, the elected institution of the Six Counties, wanted to make moves or collaborate with the Government here, it cannot do it. It cannot take any measures whatsoever. We are dependent on decisions being made at Westminster with all of the flux and the turmoil going on there, and we know those decisions have big impacts. How do we know those decisions have big impacts? We know because some of the amendments which have been brought forward by the Government to this Bill were done so directly as a result of decisions that were made in Westminster and the so-called efforts to avoid the pull factors which have been outlined. The decisions made in Westminster are going to have implications but we do not know how the Government is going to respond to them in the future. It is really important that the Minister of State provides the Houses with that assurance. If he cannot, I do not know how we can proceed. The Government is saying that 80% plus of people claiming international protection are coming from the common travel area, yet our entire international protection system is going to be based on an EU framework that takes no account of the system whatsoever. This is not just me saying this. We asked the Minister of State's Department during pre-legislative scrutiny about the analysis carried out in respect of the common travel area and how either the pact or this legislation would impact on it and it could not answer because it did not have that information. That is a reckless approach when we are considering legislation as important as this. --- 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