International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25 ============================================================ Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South I want to respond to Deputy Kelly's point. I listened very carefully to what Deputies Kelly, Gannon and Gibney had to say. I take it seriously and I am fully aware of what political objective they are seeking through these amendments. They are perfectly legitimate, and I respect them. We are talking about an amendment to section 22. It is headlined, "Obligation to travel to screening centre". I have not designated any areas as screening centres yet but if, following enactment, I designate Citywest, which is a well-known example, and I ask someone, who comes into Ireland and claims international protection, to go to the screening centre in Citywest, part of the reason an applicant is asked to go a screening centre is to enable the preliminary and vulnerability assessment to be done. That is part of the process of asking somebody to travel to a screening centre. It is not unreasonable on the part of the State to put an obligation on an individual who has come in claiming international protection to travel to a screening centre. It is not an excessive burden on that person. The amendment that Deputy Kelly wants to make is that if somebody is a presumed or identified victim that the Minister of the day could decide that they do not have to go there, but I do not understand why I would not want them to go there if that is the place where they are going to have their vulnerability and preliminary assessment carried out. That is an integral part of it. I am sorry if I sounded like a barrister. I do not intend to. --- 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