International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF), Louth Táim críochnaithe. Go raibh maith agat. I imagine a considerable number of people are going to speak to this amendment. Many of us have had to deal with the circumstances this Government has caused by not dealing with the issue of accommodation over many years. Deputy Carthy is correct that at times we have taken flak in relation to this. While there are a number of really bad actors out there, circumstances were created that they could use and abuse. It is right that we talk about the D Hotel in Drogheda. It was not good enough that the people of Drogheda lost that amenity. Proper due diligence was not on the contract and there were issues with fire certificates and all the rest of it. As we have always seen, this State and the Government rely on the private sector. People saw an opportunity and jumped in to make a profit, which is what did they did. I accept that some people ran reasonable businesses, but some chancers made a complete fortune. The way they operated businesses, if that is what we want to call them, was no addition to the people living in the accommodation and caused disaster in the communities where this happened. Deputy Carthy has stated explicitly the terrible history. We also know that where immigration has happened, it has happened well. People have been brought into the community and into people's homes and there has been integration. That has happened, both naturally and facilitated. None of this, however, is happening in the circumstances I have described. The situation has been made worse by the absence of a fit-for-purpose for dealing with processing. I do not see any solution to that because we have had promise after promise from the Government, but we have not seen clarity on delivery. We heard earlier that we do not even know what the solution will be, what relationship there will be and whether there will be a bilateral agreement with Britain in which we deal with the reality of the common travel area. That shows everything that is wrong in relation to this matter. Deputy Carthy spoke about the need to ensure we have all the services required in communities. Anyone who talks to members of any community will realise where the deficits are. In deprived communities, the deficits have been there for generation after generation. There has been abject failure. I agree with Deputy Carthy on the question marks concerning Tusla. We had Gerry Hone before the children's committee not that long ago. He explicitly stated that Tusla needs at least 300 more social workers and at least 100 more social care workers, and that is before we talk about the lack of foster parents. That is to deal with the issues in front of Tusla now, never mind what this legislation is going to put in front of the agency afterwards. The Minister and Minister of State may not want to accept the amendment from Deputy Carthy, but I beg them to find a means to have proper, decent interaction with communities and to do a proper assessment of resources and a needs analysis. This would be necessary even if we were not dealing with the issue of international protection. I fear that this abject failure will continue. It has done nothing but a disservice to our communities which have been failed for far too long. --- 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