International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18
============================================================

Mark Ward (SF), Dublin Mid-West

The Minister has said he will bring forward a definition of "legal counselling". This doubles down on the point we were making earlier that this is rushed legislation. We are on Committee Stage and we still do not have a definition in front of us to be able to discuss what "legal counselling" is. Its absence is why these amendments are being put forward today. We would not have to discuss these amendments if there was a clear definition of "legal counselling".
I will return to the questions I asked the first time I came in. Could the Minister provide clarification in respect of his definition of "legal counselling", when it comes forward? Who is going to provide it? Who is going to regulate it? Is it going to be individual counselling or will it be group counselling? I know that was brought up at the justice committee. There were concerns around whether it was going to be group counselling. If so, you could have different people from different backgrounds getting information in different languages, which could be very confusing for them. Who will provide it? Who will regulate it? Will it be individual counselling or group counselling?

---

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