International Protection Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-19
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Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland

I echo what Senator McDowell, the Minister and no doubt others have said, which is that nobody would ever want to make any moral judgment on people who seek to come to this country, often in the most difficult of circumstances. The issue is, of course, that we have to keep a structure, a cohesiveness and a reasonableness to our asylum and migration system, for the sake of fairness to those who cannot come to this country and for the sake of our economic and social cohesion, and also keeping in mind our humanitarian obligations and the security of this country in the longer term.
Two heart-rending cases struck me. The first was the case of Mr. A, a 25-year-old man from Afghanistan who was forced to flee. The Taliban killed an older sibling and there were various other horrible circumstances in his life. The fact was, though, that this gentleman came to the country after he had been in Hungary following a serious car accident. In his case, an award of €9,000 was made. The other case that was cited in the judgment of Mr. Justice Ferriter related to Mr. J, a 22-year-old Christian from India who had entered the State in March 2023. He had been forced to flee India because of his involvement in an interfaith relationship, but he went to London, where he lived for 17 months, and then came to Ireland to claim asylum. Mindful of what has been said by Senator McDowell and the Minister when we were talking about these Francovich damages, what is the Minister's view as to the reasonableness of this?
What was said yesterday was effectively that the Government's hands are tied because of the operation of European law and that this goes back to the Lisbon treaty, but I am mindful that in another forum the Minister is party to seeking to change the way things work around migration. In particular, I am thinking of the fact that Ireland has signed up to the initiative with various other countries at Council of Europe level to effectively get the European Court of Human Rights to rethink the operation of human rights law around the right of states to expel non-nationals who have criminal records. That, indeed, gave the European Court of Human Rights a fit of the vapours. The Minister has been criticised and Ireland has been criticised for being one of 26 member states that have signed up effectively to an initiative that will lead to a development at the committee of the foreign ministers this year, but there is a recalibration of the operation of the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights in prospect because member states have certain needs. What is the Minister's attitude to the operation of European law if it is leading to decisions such as we have seen in the instant case in the Ferriter judgment? Does he want to see change? Would he envisage that Ireland should seek to reclaim a measure of sovereignty, such as is set out in Senator McDowell's amendment? Does the country need to get a measure of control back so that we do not end up in situations where, notwithstanding the heart-rending nature of such cases, the State ends up being forced to compensate people at a level where it cannot compensate its own citizens in the same way, thus creating inequalities, resentments, etc.? I would be glad to hear the Minister's response to that.

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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