International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-18 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland The Minister might apologise as I need a clarification because these amendments came quite late. As the Minister will know, we had a number of areas of the migration pact which came through, which we opted into and did not opt into as yet. In these amended regulations, when we talk about safe countries and so forth, can the Minister confirm that this does not include the instance, which I think was set out previously, as one of the aspects of the migration pact which we did not opt into? I think it was the correct decision to not opt into it as yet. The instance said that there could be safe countries which were third countries with which the EU had an arrangement, maybe one of the countries to which persons could migrate. The Minister might remember. --- 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/seanad/2026-03-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-18