International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-18
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Maria McCormack (SF), Labour Panel

I welcome the Minister. I will be brief as well because I want us to get through as many amendments as we can. I am going to talk about amendments Nos. 3 and 5. Senator McDowell has outlined so much of what is important with amendment No. 3 and I commend him on that. It is about our sovereignty. I would really like to hear the Minister speak about this to this Chamber and tell us his rationale because I am really concerned. This amendment is just about one simple thing, namely, protecting our sovereignty. The principle here is that decisions on migration must remain in Ireland and we must not hand them over to the EU. This is not unique to Ireland. Other countries have a problem with this as well. We are very lucky to debate this in our Houses, although this has been a very short debate and there should have been much longer discussions through the committees. We are a very unique country and we should not hand over so much of this to the EU.
That leads me on to amendment No. 5. I heard the Minister a couple of weeks ago on RTÉ news. He might correct me if I am wrong, but I think he said 90% of immigration by international protection applicants came from the UK. If we talk about this as being the biggest problem at the minute, and I have heard the Minister say that in his speeches as well, what are we doing about that? Signing up to this EU pact is not going to do anything about that. If we know where our biggest problem is, should we not be trying to build relationships towards uniting our island or building relationships with the UK to see what we can do? I do not see any assessment anywhere in this new Bill about what analysis is being done or what risks this is going to have for the Border or what co-operation is going to take place. I am very worried that this has been rushed through so fast. The Minister is talking about how great this is going to be for our country by making everything faster and everything like that, yet 90% is coming from the north of our island and the Bill is going to do sweet FA for us. I feel we really need to address that problem. I would love to hear the Minister's thoughts on that.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-18