International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-19
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Sharon Keogan (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I move amendment No. 16:
In page 20, between lines 21 and 22, to insert the following:
“ “national reception capacity” means the number of applicants who can be accommodated within State provided reception facilities in a manner consistent with the standards of the Reception Conditions Directive;”.
Amendments Nos. 16, 380 and 381 have been proposed for a similar reason. Yesterday, the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, asked us what measures would we like to see included in the Bill. When we discussed an earlier Stage of the Bill, by the nature of it we were debating it in more general terms rather than setting out the concrete nitty-gritty changes we want. I hope that these amendments, and the greater package of amendments of which they are part, will give the Minister some idea of what we are looking for. The central issue we must address in this Bill is that of capacity. The amendments in this grouping all look at and attempt to solve one of the most uncomfortable and glaring inconveniences of this Bill, which is that none of its ambitions can be realised unless we are honest about the capacity of the State, the information available to the Oireachtas and the practical limits of implementation.
The Minister mentioned yesterday that the position of many Members of this House is that we should not have opted into the migration pact in the first place. To be open, that is my own position. We do not want to be an echo chamber. Senator McDowell said that our Government should be going to Europe to seek, through the Council, a path towards looking to reverse our own opt-in; to build alliances with other countries that are unhappy with the pact, such as the Netherlands, Poland and Austria; to reverse the general course of this pact; or even to reverse even the course the EU has taken. I might add that we should have debates scheduled in this House on this subject.
In the meantime, I am a realist. We have opted in and that is a fact. We should make the most of the space between our national sovereignty and the existing EU regulations to exercise our own sovereign control over this issue, which is something I hope these amendments will do. To be frank, this pact is doomed to fail over the long term. In the meantime, we need to guard our sovereignty with respect to the capacity of our system. How we define, recognise and build a system around capacity is within our jurisdiction. This will be crucial in guarding the integrity of our sovereignty in concrete, material terms, and not just in terms of principle as we discussed yesterday. The concrete nature of sovereignty, both our own and that of any member state, is crucial to understand. The Minister said yesterday that our sovereignty is technically intact because we opted in as a sovereign nation. Let us be real on the nature of how opt-ins happen and how the EU more generally works. While I will not impugn motives on anyone, sometimes Ministers do not have the full picture of how many powers they may be giving away and what the actual cost-benefit is. God only knows how busy they are putting out fires. This is how Brussels has been operating for years. We need to acknowledge that the EU institutions, like any institution, have an innate interest in accruing powers for themselves. We need to be clear-eyed that open Eurofederalists have a heavy influence within the institution. They are fully entitled to their views but the end product is that competence creep is a reality.
For the past 30 years national governments have been constantly losing control via the back door. When a Minister agrees to an opt-in, it barely makes the news. Years later, in hindsight, we find that we have no control over our monetary policy and no control over our fisheries. Now we will have no control over our asylum policies. We have to acknowledge this reality and ask how sovereign these opt-ins really are. If this opt-in had been decided by referendum on foot of a fully informed debate, we all know that Irish voters would have roundly rejected it. Against this backdrop, it is incumbent on everyone in these Houses, Opposition and Government alike, to push to the limits the powers our national Government can find within this Bill. This returns me to the question of national capacity. If we legislate for a system that is disconnected from the capacity to deliver it, we are not creating order; we are creating the conditions for collapse. No Senator in this House, regardless of party or ideology, should want that because it will benefit nobody. It will not benefit international protection applicants, the public, Berlaymont or Leinster House.
Amendment No. 16, in defining "national reception capacity", does something very simple: it puts into law a definition of the term and defines what it actually means.
Right now, the term "capacity" appears repeatedly in the Bill and is used in several senses such as the capacity of the applicant to understand the application process. In one case, we had adequate capacity, which means the adequate capacity of the State calculated by the European Commission in accordance with the asylum procedures regulation. This last case is dangerous and I will consider bringing Report Stage amendments - or I would have - to correct it, because we should be determining capacity, not the Commission. This is extraordinary when we consider that reception capacity determines the State's ability to comply with EU deadlines. It determines how many people can be processed, housed, interviewed or safely accommodated, as well as what constitutes overcapacity or pressure under both domestic law and EU mechanisms. How can the Government trigger a crisis derogation? How can the Minister change capacity constraints? How can any of these sections function when the foundational term is undefined? My amendment defines national reception capacity as being the number of applicants who can be accommodated within State-provided reception facilities in a manner consistent with the standards of the reception conditions directive. This is legally sound. It aligns Irish law with EU standards, and it prevents future Ministers from moving the goalposts by redefining capacity in whatever way is politically convenient. This is not opposition; it is legislative discipline.
Amendment No. 380 proposes transparent reporting every three months. If amendment No. 16 defines the concept, amendment No. 380 ensures that we monitor it properly. This amendment requires Ministers to lay before each House every three months a statement containing the current national reception capacity, as well as the number of applicants currently accommodated within that capacity. Why is this essential? It is essential because immigration and international protection policy is not static; it changes by the week. Pressures rise and fall. New obligations emerge. EU solidarity cycles adjust. Border dynamics fluctuate. Without regular reporting, the Oireachtas is legislating blindly, local authorities are planning blindly and front-line services are responding blindly. Most importantly, we would not know in real time when the system is near breaking point. The Government frequently tells us the State is doing its best and that there is pressure and that capacity is limited but none of those phrases mean anything unless we measure what capacity is, how close we are to it and how it is trending over time. As a quick side note, I believe the Minister has been doing a good job. Of course, he could have gone far beyond on this particular legislation but that is another matter. However, we need a serious change to this Bill and our stance in the EU, especially making use of the derogations, precisely in order to protect the good work done so far.
To return to the point, quarterly reporting is not burdensome. It is not politically motivated; it is a basic governance. Some may argue that this creates additional administrative work. My response is simple; if the Department cannot produce a quarterly statement of its own capacity, it is not able to administer a system this complex in the first place.
Amendment No. 381 proposes requiring Oireachtas scrutiny before any expansion of capacity. The final amendment in this grouping, amendment No. 381, deals with something critically important, namely, the democratic accountability around any decision to expand national capacity centres. Under this amendment, before any expansion occurs, the Minister must lay before the House a statement setting out the reason for the expansion, the impact on the operation of the Act, and the implications of the State's obligation under EU Acts. This is not about blocking expansions, it is about ensuring that expansions are explained, justified, and scrutinised, because expanding capacity is not a neutral act, it is a major policy decision with serious consequences. It affects housing, local services, policy, community relations and the Department's budget. It affects every existing applicant in the system and Ireland's position under EU solidarity rules. If the Minister wants to expand capacity, let him explain why, and let the Oireachtas consider it. This is democracy, transparency, and accountability. The broader issue is we cannot run an international protection system on guesswork.
When one looks at amendments Nos. 16, 380, and 381 together, they form a coherent logic in respect of defining and reporting on capacity and debating any change to capacity. Without these three steps, this Bill operates in a vacuum, as if capacity is infinite, irrelevant or too awkward to measure. We all know that Ireland's reception system is at record numbers, under severe strain and reliant on temporary accommodation. There are court cases from international protection applicants because we cannot house them. We are struggling to meet the basic standards and facing escalating pressures from EU solidarity obligations. Let me make brief reference again to the numbers we mentioned yesterday. Those numbers are horrific. We are talking about 1.2 million-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-19