International Protection Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-25
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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

I agree completely with the Cathaoirleach's remarks about the Bills Office. The fact that this document was produced effectively within 24 hours of the conclusion of Committee Stage is a tribute to the hard work, dedication and patriotism of the staff of these Houses. When we in this House complain about the absence of notice on anything, it is always at the back of my mind that there are literally people working until the early hours of the morning to provide us with whatever notice circumstances afford. I fully accept what the Chair saying in relation to that.
The second thing I want to say is that the Minister has rightly said – I want to acknowledge this – that he has devoted his personal time to the debating of this and other legislation of his to a remarkable extent. He has not done what some of his colleagues might have been tempted to do in years gone by, which was to ask a Minister of State to take this or that Stage when it was apparent to everybody in the House that a Minister of State did not have the authority to accept even the principle of an amendment, let alone accept an Opposition amendment. The Minister has been very generous with his time by being present for debates.
The Minister stated that this has to be up and running by 12 June. I do not accept that it has to be up and running by then.
To examine one aspect of this - Chapter 6 dealing with asylum border procedures - the Minister has spoken about this. He will not, by 12 June, have an asylum border procedure centre established. The Minister will not do it. With the best will in the world, I have been where he is and I know what you can do and what you cannot do. That will not be fully operational. All of the provisions that would be necessary to operate such a centre just cannot be done or put in place. The centre cannot be chosen before 12 June. We know it will be introduced gradually and in stages. I would wager a fair sum of money that the asylum border procedure centres, which are places where people who are subject to the asylum border procedure are required to remain, will not be there within the next three to five years. This is because of the difficulties involved, such as who will operate them, who will ensure they operate in an orderly fashion and who will maintain order in them? There are all sorts of these questions and I find difficult to see how they could possibly be in operation during this calendar year.
In the course of the debate the other day, there was some discussion on Committee Stage about the decision of the High Court, which dealt with compensation of persons who were inadequately housed at the height of the housing shortage, when tents were being put up around the city here in Dublin on an informal basis. One thing I want to say is, that the judgment of Mr. Justice Cian Ferriter in that matter - and I appreciate the Minister is minded to appeal and is therefore limited in what he can say on the subject - anonymised the two persons to whom damages were given, for good reason. One of the accounts on the record of the High Court stated that one of the persons to whom compensation was given, and I would like this House to know it, was an Indian national who apparently, on the judge's finding, was claiming he was a Christian and had a relationship with a Muslim girl in India. As a result of this, her family or people associated with her had made threats to his safety and he had been forced to leave India. I will not talk about the credibility of having to leave a continent because of a particular threat to you by the members of a different religion but the point that was of huge significance was, that he - Mr. A - went to Europe thereafter, went to the United Kingdom, spent 17 months there and then chose to come to Ireland at a time when we were in the midst of our crisis. The Irish State failed to provide him with proper accommodation and he had to live in a tent. He was compensated. The only point I am making is, we are legislating in the context of obligations to people of his kind but we have to be realistic. If someone chooses, having resided in the United Kingdom for 17 months, to come here and finds we do not have accommodation for him and he is obliged to live in a tent and to suffer on that account - and he did suffer on that account - the idea he can sue the Irish State for damages for failing to provide him with a proper roof and accommodation seems to me to be wrong. I mention that for this reason. If you guillotine legislation through, there are people out there, the hard right, who will exploit the fact this was rubber-stamped through the Oireachtas. That is one of the most important aspects of this. If we rush this legislation through, the hard right will say that this Act was never even properly considered. We owe it to ourselves to take sufficient time with this legislation to dispel the proposition that it was run through the Oireachtas by a series of guillotines with the vast majority of it not being considered at all.
The Minister said in relation to amendment No. 4 that it is his intention to comply with the obligations set out both in the Standing Orders of the Dáil and of the Seanad to make the report required of a Minister. He is not alone in this because as I said earlier it came as a surprise to me that was contained in the Standing Orders of this House. In the circumstance that the Minister is undertaking to report, and I hope it will not be in a cursory way, 12 months after the enactment of this Bill, if it is passed by the Dáil and signed by the President, I want to put on the record of this House that I am taking him at his word. I am also relying on the Department of justice to comply with the Minister's instructions whereby the report not be a laconic couple of pages but will really state how the Act is actually working in all of its aspects. If, for instance, I am right about the border procedure centres not having been established I would like to see that the Department furnishes an explanation as to why it has not been done.
Likewise, Members of this House have raised the question of determining the age of minors. We cannot have a situation where minors can self-identify as being of a particular age in circumstances that lack credibility. The Minister has correctly pointed out that if you put 24- and 25-year-olds who claim to be aged 17 into accommodation with 12-, 15- and 16-year-olds, you are in breach of moral and legal obligations on that account as well. There has to be realism here. The Minister mentioned the pre-legislative scrutiny and I was there for a portion of that. I have to say, I was taken aback by people who said that the law should be that, in every circumstance, a claim of minority should be accepted by the State. That cannot possibly be right and it is not a common-sense thing to do. In the spirit of the Minister stating he will comply with the requirements of the two Houses in the report required by the Standing Order of both Houses, and on the basis that the report, I hope, will not be a laconic, inadequate document but will really deal with the problems and realities of this legislation, it is not my intention to put this amendment to a vote in order to enable other amendments to be considered.
The Minister said this is important legislation and that it is very big, which is true no matter what view you take of all its provisions. However, it cannot be the case that the bigger the Bill, the less scrutiny it gets. The Planning and Development Act 2024 was guillotined through as being hugely important and it was twice the size of this. A Leas-Chathaoirligh, you may be interested to know I wanted to see what the President had signed and asked for a copy of the Act as signed into law by the President. I was informed a printed edition would not be available until an Irish translation was done of it. I do not know when that will be done. My office had to get a bound copy of what the President had signed compiled and I was charged €400 for a thing the size of an old phonebook. In the meantime it has been amended on an emergency basis so my bound volume is already out of date. My point is the size of a Bill does not mean it deserves less scrutiny. It deserves more scrutiny the bigger it is because the bigger it is, most likely, the more important it is.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-25