International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I move amendment No. 19:
In page 26, after line 30, to insert the following:
“ Cap on daily expenditure for international protection accommodation
14. (1) The Minister shall, by regulations made under this Act, prescribe a maximum amount that may be paid per person per day by the State in respect of accommodation provided to applicants for international protection.
(2) Regulations made under subsection (1) shall specify—
(a) the monetary cap applicable to all forms of accommodation procured or funded by the Minister for the purposes of this Act,
(b) the methodology used in determining the cap, including consideration of value for money, regional cost variations, and the avoidance of excessive reliance on emergency or ad hoc accommodation arrangements, and
(c) the date on which the cap shall come into operation.
(3) The Minister shall review the cap prescribed under subsection (1) at least once in every 12 month period and may amend the cap by regulation following such review.
(4) Regulations under this section shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after they are made.”.
I am surprised in respect of amendment No. 18. It would have been very complementary to this amendment. It called on the Minister to ensure that any company seeking to enter into a contract with the State for the provision of IPAS accommodation or services would be subject to mandatory due diligence and vetting procedures prior to the wording of the contract. Such measures would have included the verification of the identity of the directors, partners or the people exercising control, full appraisal of the beneficial ownership and confirmation of things like tax compliance, checks for prior regulatory sanctions and any other checks that the Minister would consider to be necessary. I do not know if the Minister is going to give any clarification at all in respect of these conversations as to any additional measures he is bringing forward that will ensure that we have proper oversight and public oversight in respect of these contracts.
Amendment No. 19 provides for a cap on the daily expenditure for international protection accommodation. The Minister's responses to the previous amendment will crystalise for all Members the need for this. This is not an endorsement of the private provision of IPAS accommodation. It is an acknowledgement and a recognition of the reality. It is bizarre that Members of the Opposition voted against the previous amendment, which called for transparency on contracts. There was a very far-reaching suggestion that by suggesting having transparency in respect of private contracts in some way means that it is an endorsement of private contracts. The amendment sets out that there will be a maximum payment rate per bed per day. That is again to ensure that there are proper checks and balances and oversight.
I do not know if the Minister will tell us tonight, but we have not been told up until this point, what the maximum payment paid per bed per night in any accommodation centre is. He certainly will not tell us where that is being paid, which is the crux of the problem we discussed earlier. When we are talking about expenditure of €1.2 billion in a year, there is no capital expenditure in that. That is money that is spent. That in itself was an increase of almost €200 million on the year before. For all the rhetoric of the Minister of improvements, the only thing the Minister and Department can be adjudicated on is one financial year versus the next financial year. There was an increase of €195 million between 2024 and 2025. That represents expenditure of €3.28 million per day. Those are astronomical and amazing figures when we think about it. As a result of the information that we gleamed from the Department, we know that the average rate per bed per day rose by 68%, or almost 740%, between 2022 and 2024. That is nothing to do with the numbers of people coming. Costs are going to increase when we are accommodating more people. That is a given. That is profiteering. I will use term again unapologetically when we have a situation where there is a 70% increase, not in the overall costs but in the cost per bed per day. As the Minister essentially conceded, people saw an opportunity and took full advantage. That money did not result in a better service or better accommodation for the people who are housed there. It certainly did not result in better value for the taxpayer. That money has gone straight into the pockets of those private providers. We can only assume and deduce quite reasonably that it was a 70% increase on profits because the cost base between 2022 and 2024 did not increase by 70%. It did for the taxpayer, not the actual provider. There was a lot of discussion in respect of the pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme. The pre-legislative scrutiny report highlighted serious concerns about the escalating and unsustainable cost of IPAS accommodation. It noted that the Bill contains no mechanism whatsoever to cap costs, no strategy to control provider pricing and no reforms to prevent the State from becoming increasingly dependent on expensive private contracts. That was at the pre-legislative scrutiny stage.
True to form, Ministers just ignored that aspect of the report from the committee just as they ignored everything else. The only thing that has decided the Government's approach to all of this is an absolute pigheadedness to adhere to the deadline that been set in place by the EU migration and asylum pact. To hell with democratic oversight, to hell with the position of the justice committee that undertook comprehensive pre-legislative scrutiny and to hell with all of those who gave up their time and prepared substantive submissions and came before the committee to give their oral submissions and take questions from the members of the committee who then went to the point of compiling the pre-legislative scrutiny report. This amendment is requiring the Minister to set a daily maximum rate. I am not even trying to tell Minister what it should be. We have set out that the maximum daily rate should be €71, which is the average rate. A total of €71 per bed per night is a good return for anybody within that business if that is what they are doing. It would set out parameters to which the Department would adhere. It would define how the cap should be calculated.
It mandates annual reviews and ensures all regulations - this is crucially important for accountability and a bit of democratic oversight - are formally laid before the Oireachtas. What is the alternative? The Minister has basically told us that if it comes to a point where the system is under pressure again, we will be back to the same situation. Who knows what could happen internationally that would result in the number of people seeking international protection growing very quickly in a very short space of time, putting pressure on services? The providers will once again hold all of the cards in the negotiations and, because the Government has rejected any semblance of oversight or transparency, the Department will be doing side deals again. A couple of years later, we will find out through another report of the Comptroller and Auditor General that somebody else who owned a coffee shop and was barely breaking even has become a multimillionaire on the back of a crisis situation and the inability of the Government to manage public finances effectively. I have moved the amendment. I hope that, in this instance, the Government will say that this is as reasonable as an Opposition amendment gets, that it is about having a little bit of financial and democratic oversight and that it therefore makes absolute sense to incorporate it into the Bill.

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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