International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25
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Alan Kelly (LAB), Tipperary North

Even though we have disagreed on quite a bit and despite the way he is guillotining this whole debate, the Minister has conducted himself in a fair way but his previous response smacked of a different tone. He let himself down. I do not know; maybe he was going back to his barrister days. It almost came across like a challenge to us. Who cares whether it is perfectly prescribed, as the Minister sees it, in this Bill. It goes beyond all of that. If he does not like our wording, he can table another amendment. He should bring it through the Seanad and then back to this House. However, if we, as a country, cannot have a system whereby within this legislation whereby there is a vulnerability assessment done and we cannot say that we know or believe that somebody is being trafficked, then we are letting everything we stand for as a country down. There are many professional organisations and people who can work with the State to help deal with this matter. It is not a debate about how we decide whether somebody is trafficked. That is being done every day of the week. That is not the debate. The debate is around whether the Minister has the will do it, whether it is by accepting these amendments or bringing forward his own. If the Minister stood up and said that he is willing to bring forward his own to deal with the matter, that would be something.
When it comes to the issue, the fact is that we are not treating people who are in a very vulnerable state in the manner in which we should. We are not practising what we preach. As a State, we have not learned from past issues, and we are going very close to bone given what was apologised for today. The Minister needs to reflect on this because if he does not deal with this, there will be a situation whereby we will be looking back at this in the future and saying that we pointed out that it was wrong thing to do, but the Minister ploughed on with it and we now have all these situations. We do not want to end up in that scenario. By reply, he might say that he might deal with this. If he is not happy with my amendment or Deputy Gannon's, he might say that he is going to deal with it in the Seanad. Either way, the first amendment is mine and I will press it.

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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