International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-18
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Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

I want to thank in the first instance Senator Ryan for amendment No. 3. I propose to respond to amendments Nos. 3 to 5, inclusive, 8 and 382 together as they relate to matters regarding Ireland's sovereignty and the common travel area. I will start by looking at amendment No. 3 itself, which states, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as limiting the sovereign authority of the State ... to determine policy in respect of immigration ... " We need to recognise that what we are doing here today is Irish sovereignty in practice. We are debating legislation that was passed by the Lower House and has come here to decide what policy Ireland wants as its asylum law for this time onwards in the 21st century.
It is our policy. It is our sovereignty. Our Constitution says we are a sovereign, independent, democratic State. We made a decision back in the early 1970s to join what was then the European Economic Community. That was a sovereign exercise by the Irish people. We decided to join it and subsequently we made a decision about the Lisbon treaty. The Irish people decided to sign up to it. They were all exercises of Irish sovereignty. Sovereignty also means we can make a decision to share our sovereignty with others in areas where we think it is appropriate and beneficial to us to do so. On the decisions made on the Lisbon treaty, one of the things we opted out of was the area of justice and home affairs, but we said we could opt into it under Protocol No. 21. Again, that is an example of Ireland making a decision based on our sovereign choice. In the previous Dáil and Seanad, a decision was made to opt in to the regulations and directives that make up the migration pact. That was Irish sovereignty in practice and if people want to opt out of the pact, although I do not know how that can be done, the vote would not be in favour of those who say we should never have opted in to the regulations and directives. I cannot accept amendments Nos. 3 or 4 in respect of sovereignty because this is Ireland exercising its sovereignty.
One of the issues raised by Sinn Féin in the Lower House was that we should not have opted in to the migration pact, that we made a terrible mistake. There are people outside Sinn Féin who say that as well. I ask, only partly rhetorically, what they would do to change Ireland's asylum laws? Even if we were not in the migration pact - if we had decided to do what Denmark did - we would still find ourselves in the situation where people will come to Ireland to claim asylum. We will still find ourselves attached to a part of the United Kingdom, with people coming down to Ireland because it is an attractive location and English speaking. Therefore, we need to have a more advanced view of the consequences of not signing up to the migration pact. People's view is that we would be in a much better position and that we would be like Denmark and people would not come in. That is not an accurate counterfactual. We would still find ourselves attached to part of the United Kingdom and large numbers of people wanting to come here.
Amendment No. 5 is about the common travel area. It is a real challenge for me as Minister and for legislators to determine what we can do in respect of the common travel area. I have emphasised previously that the common travel area is there for the benefit of citizens of Ireland and the United Kingdom. I would like Senators and political parties to emphasise that more. People are not permitted to travel from Northern Ireland into the Republic if they are not citizens of Ireland, the UK or the Channel Islands, which are also in it. That can be emphasised.
On Senator McCormack's question about what we are doing, I said earlier, if we want to ensure people do not come from Northern Ireland into the Republic unless they are citizens of the Irish jurisdictions, we put up a hard Border. The Senator does not want a hard Border, just as much as I do not. I also asked Deputy Carthy this. What is Sinn Féin's proposal to stop people who are not entitled to use the common travel area travelling from Northern Ireland to the Republic? I appreciate it is a complex issue. What I have done, however, is to have meetings as recently as last week with the British Government in Cork where we discussed abuse of the common travel area. We need to call it abuse of the common travel area because that is what it is. One of the things I will seek to agree with the British Government is an increase in data sharing. Data is important in this and the more data we have about people who have applied in the UK and then apply here or vice versa , the better. We will also agree to have greater operational measures to ensure the common travel area is not abused.
At present, the UK is designated under Irish law as a safe third country because it is a safe third country. In practice, we are not sending people back to the UK because they have come from there or have already applied there. Similarly, the UK is not sending back to Ireland people who applied in Ireland and then went to the UK. We just talked about people coming from Scotland to Northern Ireland down to the South. Similarly, the British Government talked to me about people coming into Dublin Airport, going to Belfast and travelling across, getting into the UK that way.
Therefore, in terms of operationalising it with returns from one jurisdiction to the other and the same numbers going across each time, the reality of what the British Government is doing at the moment has to be appreciated. It entered an agreement with France that there would be one in and one out and we can see what its view of that is. I will continue to engage with my colleagues in the UK. There is good co-operation between the Home Office and the Department of justice and improvements are deriving from it. However, short of putting up a hard Border, it is extremely difficult to stop people coming in. We need to ensure and emphasise that if people have applied for asylum in the UK, they cannot apply in Ireland and vice versa and these factors will be taken into account in the asylum pact. That was in respect of amendment No. 5.
I cannot accept amendment No. 8 either or the final amendment, which I said I was considering, amendment No. 382.
I will deal briefly with some of the comments made by Senator McDowell. I know we want to get on to amendments, but it is sometimes worth having a broader debate, although there was a Second Stage debate. I cannot change the Lisbon treaty that was signed in 2004. A provision was included in Article 18 of the charter that the right to asylum shall be respected in the European Union. EU countries - and this is apparent to me from meetings of the Justice and Home Affairs Council - recognise that there is a limit to the number of people who can be accommodated by the European Union. That is the current view of the European Union. Senator Higgins referred to the disruption and chaos in the world. That is of course correct, but it does not mean that a small section of the world is responsible for accepting a significant number of asylum applicants. The world has to bear the responsibility equally for asylum applicants. However, it is unquestionably the case, looking at the statistics for Ireland, that the majority of people who apply for asylum on the basis that they are fleeing persecution and war do not get it because the finding is that they are not. I have to be able to say that and we have to have an open and frank discussion about it.
I agree with Senator McDowell. I do not morally condemn anyone who wants to come to Ireland or the European Union to try to make a better life. I slightly disagree with the comparison with what happened in the 19th century or 20th century in Ireland. Asylum now puts significant obligations on states that were not there before, including providing accommodation and processing applications. That did not happen when people went to America in the past. I do not morally condemn anyone seeking to move to improve their lives. However, it is the case that we have to try to have a balance between the rights we protect and the State we seek to protect. I ask the Senator to consider it.
Sometimes a simplistic analysis is put forward that if we had not gone into the pact we would not have this trouble. I believe, if we had stayed out of the pact and gone on our own, we would be in a worse condition. I gave the statistics for last year with the reduction in asylum numbers throughout the European Union. They are approximately 20% down. In Ireland, they are 30% down. In the UK, which decided to go it alone, they are 4% down. Going it alone, doing our own thing, is not necessarily a recipe for success in trying to get greater control of the asylum system.
At the same time, we need to be able to have an honest discussion about immigration. Sometimes, and understandably so, people shy away from talking about it because it is manipulated and weaponised by people who are on the extremes. For a centre-ground political system such as Ireland's and as represented in this House, we have to be able to discuss it because if we do not discuss it and set forward what our honest views are in respect of it, then it will be weaponised by the extremes.

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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