International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan Sinn Féin will be supporting amendment No. 10. I just want to speak to amendments Nos. 17, 20, 134, 154, 192 and 206, which are in my name and which set out very clearly in a number of different provisions within the Bill that the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration in the carrying out of any procedures. This is really important for a number of reasons. Children are clearly very vulnerable in many aspects. There is a whole raft of areas of concern about how children are treated in the international protection system, particularly when we are talking about very young children. They do not decide to arrive in Ireland or anywhere else and make an international protection application. If they are with their parents or guardian, that decision has been made on their behalf by their parent or guardian. Whatever about the merits of the case or whatever else, it is academic. It does not matter. Their interests need to be protected. We also know that for what I would consider to be too large a number of unaccompanied minors who come into the State, in many respects, there is a hidden hand behind their arrival in Ireland. Some of it is quite nefarious and some of it is very dangerous in terms of the safety of the children. There are bad actors - the terms "people smugglers" or "human traffickers" could be applied to them. Therefore, it is crucially important that this State has very robust procedures, absolutely, but also that it ensures the welfare of the child does not come into question. I agree with everything that has been said that when we talk about any core principle, we also need to define it. That is why I welcome the amendment from Deputies Gannon and Kelly that set out a definition. Again, I would ask the Minister whether he is accepting that definition. I think the definition is 100% fine. If he is not accepting the definition, is he going to bring forward another definition or is there going to be a definition for rights of the child? In respect of amendments Nos. 17, 20, 134, 154, 192 and 206, which are in different parts of the legislation and refer to very specific roles regarding the best interests of the child, that principle is set in as an important general instruction to those who will be charged with manning the international protection system. It is important. The Irish people want a system that works. They want a system where decisions are made quickly but where they are the right decisions, so that if people have an entitlement to be here, they receive that entitlement and they are supported to become fully fledged members of our communities, and if they do not have an entitlement to be here, that decision is made quickly. In the meantime, when that decision is being made, I believe the vast majority of Irish people want people to be treated decently. They want people to be treated with the same responsibilities and the same rights and benefits we would expect Irish people to receive elsewhere. They are just fundamental principles. There is a particular empathy with young people who are emigrants. I was born as an emigrant. It was not a million miles away - across the water - but the experience of an immigrant child is very peculiar because growing up is hard to do and especially for older children and teenagers. It can be a very traumatic experience, and we need to be cognisant of that because regardless of whether somebody is entitled to ultimately to be in Ireland, we want their experience to be a positive one from the start. If they are not entitled to be in Ireland and they go elsewhere in the world, we still want their experience of dealing with the Irish system to have been fair and humane. I commend this amendment. I will press each of the amendments. I am hoping that the Minister will give an indication that he will accept some, if not all, of those amendments, which, as I said, are just putting the principle of the best interests of the child in various sections. However, I do think it would be important that the House vote on at least one of those to send out a very clear message that they are the guiding principles by which we judge ourselves. --- 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