International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-19 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I have a single extra sentence that relates directly to this. In the mechanism in the Bill that refers to a chief inspector, there is not clarity with regard to the powers that the chief inspector will have., Crucially, there seems to be a gagging mechanism in the Bill that will make the chief inspector unable to answer to Oireachtas committees. Unless we have a report structure, we are in danger that the chief inspector inspecting these places of residence will be precluded by the Bill from properly answering to a committee. --- 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/2026-03-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-19