International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25 ============================================================ Ruth Coppinger (PBP), Dublin West The fear being experienced by minorities in this country, people who are working and living here, is not mentioned. None of Sinn Féin's speakers have mentioned it either. If Sinn Féin were to be fair, it would concede that most of the party's speakers have used their time to talk about profiteering and all of the other problems but have never focused on the racism being generated in society. All of the facts and figures show a rise in racism. To be very clear, I primarily blame the Government. Deputy Simon Harris has tried to blame minorities and refugees for the housing crisis. That is pitiable and abominable but it is really not surprising. If Sinn Féin thinks this is going to push back against its supporters leaning into racism, it really is not. It actually just lends credibility to those ideas. Any honest assessment of a leaflet like that in conjunction with this amendment would agree. We have to point to the wealth that exists in this society. This Government has a record budget surplus but it has never used it to resolve the housing crisis. We have had a housing crisis for 12 or 13 years now, since way before the recent migration. Migration has also gone down. I have heard different speakers in the Dáil talking about deportations. Being the subject of a deportation order does not mean a person is a criminal. Some of what Sinn Féin has put in this leaflet is not in line with some of its TDs' views. Some of those TDs have taken up this issue quite well in different areas. However, this leaflet is totally disingenuous stuff. Putting this out in communities just feeds into the whole narrative of refugees being a major problem. There are 18 billionaires on this planet who control half the wealth. There is huge wealth in this country that could be used to build homes, to sort out the healthcare system and to provide the schools that we need without scapegoating minorities and people who have fled countries for the most difficult reasons. There are other parties and individuals in here who do nothing but demonise people every time migration comes up. I helped members of the Indian community organise a march last summer following attacks on Indian members of our community. Every single one of them reported a climate of increased racism in this country. All of this feeds into it. It is just very unfair. We have to call out racism wherever it is. I say to those who are meant to be standing on the left that racism is a key issue for the left. If you do not take a firm stance against it and if you start using some of the arguments of the far right and racists, you will not fight them off. I think Sinn Féin believes it will and that is why it is doing this but I cannot support this amendment. It is completely and utterly a recipe for the far right to stoke up fear and to grow in every single community in the area. If we looked through the record and counted up the words of most of the Sinn Féin TDs, we would see that they have spent their time complaining. I am not saying there are not issues in different communities and areas. There obviously are but the Sinn Féin speakers' whole thing was just an attack on Ukrainians, blaming them for a great many issues. Donegal has been a deprived county for decades. --- 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/2026-02-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-25