International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18
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Aidan Farrelly (SD), Kildare North

I thank the Minister for his response. Today we are misjudging in an overwhelming fashion the vulnerability associated with children and young people who are experiencing this process. In doing so, I have lost count of the number of bodies with acronyms that have come out and said that it is never in a child's best interests to be detained. Notwithstanding the fact that the Minister has included point 3 in the Bill, against every research piece and piece of evidence that says it is never in the child's best interest to be detained, who is experienced or qualified enough to go against that and decide it is deemed to be in a child's best interests to be detained?
We have amendments that ask for this to be removed wholesale. We should not be legislating for the detention of children. I will take the opportunity to say that now. Will a lack of availability in the State of appropriate care ever be a rationale for detaining children? If we cannot or are not in a position to provide appropriate places for children or young people, based on it being in their best interests could there be a rationale to detain them?
We spent the guts of what felt like 14 hours discussing a definition of "absconding". Children and young people will not even have the opportunity to abscond because, in some cases, they will be detained for doing nothing wrong. How will it be deemed to be in their best interest to be detained for nothing at all?

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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