International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I move amendment No. 15:
In page 26, after line 30, to insert the following:
“Community impact assessments prior to location of international protection accommodation
14. (1) Prior to the establishment of any new accommodation centre under this Act, the Minister shall ensure that a Community Impact Assessment is prepared and published.
(2) A Community Impact Assessment shall be carried out by—
(a) the relevant local authority, or
(b) such other competent body as the Minister may appoint for that purpose.
(3) A Community Impact Assessment shall include—
(a) the projected capacity of the proposed centre,
(b) an assessment of local service impacts,
(c) community engagement plans,
(d) proposed mitigation measures, and
(e) an analysis of the Pobal Deprivation Index for the area concerned, including consideration of whether the proposal would contribute to a disproportionate concentration of accommodation centres in disadvantaged communities.
(4) The body carrying out the Assessment under subsection (2) shall conduct a statutory consultation with—
(a) the relevant local authority (where it is not itself the assessing body), and
(b) community stakeholders.
(5) A centre shall not commence operation until—
(a) the consultation period has concluded, and
(b) the Community Impact Assessment has been published.”.
This is a critical amendment from Sinn Féin's perspective. It sets out that, prior to any new IPAS accommodation being established, the Minister would ensure that a community impact assessment was prepared and published, the impact assessment would be carried out by the relevant local authority or other such competent body as the Minister may appoint, and the community impact assessment would include information pertaining to the projected capacity of the proposed centre, an assessment of the local service impacts, community engagement plans, proposed mitigation measures and an analysis of the Pobal deprivation index for the area concerned, including consideration of whether the proposal would contribute to a disproportionate concentration of accommodation centres in disadvantaged communities. The body carrying out the assessment would carry out a statutory consultation with the relevant local authority and community stakeholders and the centre would not commence operation until that consultation period had concluded and the community impact assessment had been published.
This is critical because all of the debates around migration and, specifically, IPAS have taken place in the context of this aspect of our international protection system being handled disastrously. I would say disgracefully. I say that as someone who comes from a rural county, Monaghan. As I mentioned earlier, I was born a migrant across the water. The history of Monaghan is a history of migration to places all over North America. There are countries in Latin America that are independent today because Monaghan people emigrated or, in some instances, were exiled. The Fenians attempted to capture Canada at one point, led by a Monaghan man.
The history of Monaghan's migration was one of outward migration for many centuries. For the past number of decades, however, even though we are a rural county, we probably had much more immigration proportionately than many other counties. There are a number of reasons for that, and one is that we have a strong and vibrant agrifood sector. Employment permits were issued originally to people from eastern Europe and now from all over the world. County Monaghan had one of the first direct provision centres. We have had a success story in terms of people coming to our county, making it their home and making our communities more vibrant. Local communities have embraced and welcomed people.
People have come to Monaghan from the Congo, Syria and elsewhere on official resettlement programmes. I was a member of the local authority when those resettlement programmes happened. This will sound alien, but I will tell Deputies about my experience. Prior to those programmes, the council was asked to appoint a number of members to sit on a preparation group. We attended meetings with health and education services, the Garda, the local authority and the Department well in advance of resettlement. We dealt with all of the contingencies and potential issues that might arise and all of the mitigation measures that needed to be in place were thrashed out and planned. Those resettlement programmes were a huge success. People who came through the scheme as kids are now adults and play a vital and very welcome role in our communities. That is how to do things right.
Move forward and we see the debacle of direct provision and how it was allowed to run roughshod and become a source of profit for a small number of individuals. In the late 1990s and early 2000s and for the first time ever, Ireland became a destination for people seeking international protection or asylum. I would love to have been a fly on the wall to try to understand the mentality of the people who sat around and said they could examine international models of how best to manage this only for somebody to say that we needed to figure out a way for a few of their mates to make money out of this, because that is essentially what happened with direct provision.
In this regard, I often think of a scenario where someone asked what would happen if they converted a building into a direct provision facility and the numbers dropped. I can imagine a Fianna Fáil representative saying, “Don't worry. We'll make the process so slow that once someone is accommodated in your centre, they'll be there so long you'll be guaranteed to make your return out of it.”
By the mid-2010s, the direct provision system was full to the seams. Something else needed to happen at that point. Rather than learning from the mistakes that were made, those responsible decided to try to find emergency accommodation. Did they put in place a State body? No. What they did was go back to the same people again and provided them with more profits. It was decided to find intermediaries. That was the term used at the time. As a result of all this, people in the rural communities close to where I live who had already lost their post offices and Garda stations and who had no amenities other than their local hotels, woke up one morning to discover that - without any engagement with them - they were being turned into IPAS centres. If the Government were to try to create division, resentment and anger in local communities, it could not have done it any better.
That system began in rural communities. It then began to be put in place in urban communities more often. The one thing all the communities involved had in common when this happened was that they were already deprived of services, amenities and investment, both public and private. More than any single action taken or any set of decisions made, that was what led to the hostility and anger we have seen across our country. There are people standing by who are ready to manipulate that anger and turn it against those in the accommodation to which I refer as opposed to turning it against those who were at fault, namely the successive Governments that allowed the system to come into place.
Everybody accepts that we need change. The amendment sets out very clearly for local communities – I include in this those who have made our towns, villages and cities their home in recent years – that never again will we allow such obscenities to happen. In that context, I refer to communities losing amenities and seeing buildings being converted into IPAS accommodation centres and things being done for the motivation of profit without their being engaged with. The amendment sets out the parameters as to how that would happen. I appeal to the Ministers to accept it. If they do not, they will be sending a message to the effect that what happened before could happen again.
Some of the stories I have heard are absolutely obscene. We have had countless towns which were struggling for economic regeneration and in which the last hotel was snapped up overnight with no engagement whatsoever. Of course, the elected Government representatives in these places go to ground when this happens. In many areas, it has been left to Sinn Féin representatives to try to be the bridge between communities and the Department and to get some semblance of understanding as to what was happening. In many cases, that put us in the firing line with those who were most angry. That is completely unfair. If we are going to live up to our responsibilities and recognise that mistakes were made, we have to put in place a mechanism by means of which those mistakes can be corrected.
Let us make no mistake about it. The location of IPAS accommodation has been determined by one factor, that is, the availability of buildings and the willingness of their owners to allow them to be used for the purposes of providing such accommodation. Nothing else has been taken into consideration. There is no assessment of either the capacity or the needs of the communities involved, of the purposes for which such buildings are being used or of the impact their being repurposed will have. Our amendment sets out how and why we need to deal with that.
When you are dealing with profit motivation, the areas most likely to be the source are those where property is cheaper. Where is property cheaper? It is cheaper in areas that considered deprived in the context of the Government’s index, namely the Pobal HP deprivation index. Many communities and community leaders have been left in impossible situations. They want to ensure that anybody who moves into their area is welcomed and treated with dignity, but they are also dealing with the absurdity of more vulnerable people being brought into communities that are already full of vulnerable people and where services are stretched to breaking point. The amendment simply seeks to ensure that there will be proper community engagement in future. That engagement should not take the form of a consultation process like that which currently operates whereby what counts for engagement is elected representatives getting a phone call or an email to tell them that a contract has been signed, brought to an end or whatever. That is not engagement. Engagement is what I described previously with regard to what was done in respect of resettlement programmes. I put that on the record because some of our amendments relating to due diligence and transparency have been ruled out of order.
We have to get to the point where people are told the facts in respect of contracts that are being signed. Last year, €1.2 billion was spent on IPAS accommodation. That is more than €3 million each day.
I really hope the Minister of State will indicate that the Government is going to accept amendment No. 15. There is nothing in it that would interfere with any other aspect of the International Protection Bill. Nothing in the amendment will prevent the Minister from doing anything in terms of processing or any of the other mechanisms. All it says is that before a new IPAS centre is opened, a community assessment should be carried out. We are saying to communities all over the country that they are going to be part of what happens in the same way they are when virtually anything else is being built and when they can have their say through the planning process. We are also saying that if something is being developed by someone with a bit of cop-on, they should engage with the local community and get the goodwill of its members.
I am very proud of this amendment. I really hope the Government will indicate that there has been a sea change in the context of how we deal with this issue and that it is going to accept the amendment.

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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