International Protection Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-25
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Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel

This is a very simple amendment but it is an important one. It will enshrine the independence of officers in the International Protection Office within the asylum determination process under the Bill. Between the 1996 Refugee Act and the 2015 International Protection Act, an independent refugee commissioner played a key role in our system by examining each case and made binding recommendations to the Minister. From 2015 that process changed, with the recommendations then being made by international protection officers in the Department of justice. The independence of those international protection officers was specified in the Bill and the Supreme Court underlined its importance in line with the 2013 EU asylum procedures directive requirements for impartiality. The EU's new regulation replacing the asylum procedures directive made a similar requirement of impartiality. Clearly, at EU level the situation here has not changed, yet this Bill makes no reference at all to officials when it comes to deciding protection applications. All the power seems to be vested in the Minister as the determining authority. This amounts to an abolition of the independence that was core to the 2015 Bill, and which the Supreme Court endorsed unambiguously in the ASA judgment. It seems as if the Government is intending to treat international protection applications as a normal piece of its departmental business and that all functions will be vested in the Minister but carried out by officials, which means without any statutory independence.
This also means that there is no guarantee that a single person will be considered in deciding on an application case, which is really important. Under this Bill, a case could be treated like any other piece of departmental business and would be sent up the line through the hierarchy of the Department, with various eyes and hands adding to the decision-making process. This is not in line with the spirit of EU law and the Supreme Court's rulings.
International protection applications must be considered and decided by whoever decides on a quasi-judicial basis. I do not know why the Government voted this down in the Dáil but I urge the Minister to reconsider because it is a simple but important fix to make sure the Bill does not run the risk of undermining the independence that has been well established as a necessary cornerstone of a fair and impartial application system.

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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