International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

I support Deputy Gannon on this amendment. It is incredibly sad that we are moving towards this system of detention not just in Ireland but also across Europe through the EU migration and asylum pact, particularly because it took the State so long to untangle international protection from pursuing people through arrest. The courts had to achieve that through a series of cases to eventually try to meet our commitments under the EU reception directive. The worst part is that we have never done international protection well. We were just about starting to get to the point where we would do that but then we had to deal with crises that hampered any well-intentioned efforts by the Government to address the matter.
To take, lock, stock and barrel, what we did not have to take from the EU migration and asylum pact is concerning. It is often forgotten that we could have taken a modular approach to this but chose not to. Instead of taking that approach, we are moving towards a system that will detain people. The subsection is an example of an unlawful detention proposal that we cannot stand over as a State.
Deputy Gannon is correct in that we have a history of this. We know what happens. This is a trend across multiple countries and we cannot stand by it. Therefore, I support amendment No. 21 and ask the Government to do the same.

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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