International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I do not know why the Minister is being entirely disingenuous. He knows what Sinn Féin's position is. We want to get rid of the Border in our country. We want a unitary state and we have repeatedly said for those who want to manage the migration system, that is the single biggest step we could take to have the capacity of being able to do that. In terms of a bilateral arrangement with Britain, it means we would have the ability on the island of Ireland to actually be able to ensure we know who is coming in and who is moving out of our country at any given time.
Yes, there is a fundamental problem in that our island is partitioned and part of our country operates within an EU framework and part does not. One of the fundamental problems we have with the approach of the Minister and Government on the EU asylum and migration pact is that they are enforcing and enacting a Bill that takes no cognisance of that. There is no reference to the common travel area in the Bill. The Minister has just rejected an amendment that would actually put an onus on Government to provide a detailed report on the implications and the mitigation measures put in place in respect of the common travel area.
Let us have an honest debate and let us not try to put words in people's mouths. We need to be clear that a lot of the questions that people have about international protection cannot be answered by the Minister precisely because we are a divided country and we do not have any mechanism in place to have an arrangement with the British Government to address those issues, being mindful of the point I made earlier.
It is bad enough we have two states on this island but the fact the northern state has no competency whatsoever in respect of migration makes it even more complicated. The only mechanism we have to address these issues is through bilateral arrangements with the British Government.

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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