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

Human trafficking is a horrendous scourge on our society. It is a multibillion dollar crime that is carried out by organised crime gangs.
The delicacy with which we have to treat victims of human trafficking cannot be overstated. I referenced earlier how long it had taken us, essentially driven by the courts, to untangle international protection from allegations of crime. The case I was referencing directly relates to these amendments because in 2019, a Vietnamese woman was found in a cannabis growhouse and it was her case that unlocked the fact that even though she had been trafficked, she still had to fight a prosecution against her and it took that case, after years of so much work from so many civil society organisations and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which I used to work for, to force this State to recognise the way that international protection and human trafficking are intertwined. To think that this Government is sleepwalking us back into a situation where people who are victims of human trafficking are going to be prosecuted, penalised and detained is head-in-the-sand stuff of the highest order. International protection is messy. Getting your documents ready to travel from a situation of persecution, conflict, war and torture is virtually impossible. The vulnerability that you put yourself in and the way that you make yourself so susceptible to exploitation by bad actors are off the charts, so to think we cannot see that nuance and intricacy within the process and legislate to effectively deal with it shocks me to the core. I support this amendment.

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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