International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Alan Kelly (LAB), Tipperary North It is relevant because now the Minister is bringing in a term that he does not even believe in. We need a bit of levity here. We are going to be here too long. The Minister let out a little nugget out earlier when he said that more amendments will be brought through the Seanad. Why are they being brought through the Seanad? We have eight hours here today, another day here next week and - God knows - maybe even longer. Can the Minister not muster to take this out, because it is a halfway house to nowhere? It is hindering the Bill. It is hindering the discussion. As I said to the Minister previously, it will probably create a condition where the Minister will be the Manchurian candidate, as the justice Minister, giving a whole load of money to a lot of his ex-colleagues to determine what the hell this means in this Bill because nobody knows. In fairness to Deputy Carthy and the team, they have put in a definition that has got through. Others have tried and failed, for whatever reason. This will end up with vulnerable people who have problems with language not knowing exactly what is going on. They will go through the rabbit hole of legal counselling rather than receiving proper legal advice, which as we all know is defined. We will have a situation where this will have to be determined by the courts. There is a need for a little bit of common sense. Everybody should be on the one page here. The Minister should either define it, which I do not think is the right way to go but I will support as the lesser of two evils, or get rid of it. It is ridiculous. It is not helping anybody and will not help anybody into the future. --- 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