International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18
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Gary Gannon (SD), Dublin Central

No, but the Minister said that the term "the best interests of the child" is in the Constitution. The rights of the family are also enumerated in the Constitution, but later tonight the Minister will obliterate the family reunification scheme. There is no consistency across the board in terms of the arguments or the merits. I have come to the conclusion that the Minister is probably going to vote against all of the amendments. That is fine; he is in Government and we are not. However, there is no way that 276 amendments can all be without merit. Why can we not define the rights of a child here? The Minister may need to add two or three things through Seanad amendments if he wishes, but why do we not establish collectively across the Chamber that it would be in the best interests to put some specification on what exactly the best interests of a child would be? Should he wish to amend that further in the Seanad, that is up to the Minister, but at least we can come away with the sense that maybe this was a worthwhile several-year process that we all engaged in, where we were told at each point there would be something coming at the next point. It simply has not happened. I think we can all agree that the best interests of children should actually have some specification in a Bill of this importance.

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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