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

The Minister presents to us a hypothetical scenario where someone comes in and is sent to Citywest. This is the system he is presenting to us. We are trying our best to fix parts within it, which we believe will make it a humane and fairer system. Given the Minister presented one hypothetical scenario, here is another one. Let us say a government of the future is even harder on migration than this one is and has even more right-wing views on international protection, which penalise people for being in the system at all, and there is a screening centre that is a set of tents in a field in the middle of the country.
We are going to send somebody there who, coming off the boat, is pleading with officials that they are a victim of international trafficking. The Minister cannot just present one hypothetical and expect to say this is going to work for it. It is the Minister's responsibility to build in the processes that will identify victims of trafficking so they are not treated in ways that retraumatise, penalise and prosecute them in ways that are just not humane within this system.
That is what we are saying. We appreciate that there is a system to deal with international protection that allows for people to put forward their claim for asylum and for it to be treated. Within that system, there are also people who have been trafficked and who have experienced incredibly egregious crimes against them. We are trying to allow for those people to be treated differently within this cohort of people looking for international protection. That is what this amendment tries to do and that is what we are trying to resolve with 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