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

I will let the Minister answer that question in due course. It does point to another question. I have been referring to reports and they include reports from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States, from the University of Essex in the UK and from data protection systems within the UK. The Minister talked about how the technology has been improving as it goes along, but this is the same key point I mentioned in terms of the testing on vulnerable persons or using them as guinea pigs.
On our specific amendments, the Bill as it is set out at the moment has quite wide powers in terms of detention and it does not refer to powers of detention unless an applicant co-operates with the screening centre. The Minister described that scenario. What it actually refers to is detention for the purposes of confirming somebody's identity or nationality. It does not refer to whether an applicant was willing to go a screening centre or to provide biometric data. Again, whether this is a necessary and proportionate test can also be questioned. It actually says for the purposes of confirming somebody's identity or nationality. The Bill provides for scenarios where somebody maybe co-operates and then gets told that the Eurodac system thinks they may be four people already in the system, or that it thinks it is a certain person, and they say they are not. It provides for the detention of that person and the kinds of pressure that come from being in a situation where someone is detained and cannot leave. They are potentially in a room or a screening centre and unable to leave it because there is a dispute about the messages coming from the Eurodac system. We could have a situation where people are detained after they have co-operated, given their biometric data and gone through the system. That could create pressure on people and intimidate them. It is not clear what the weighting of that biometric data is. The Minister says that we should be able to check the system, but what is the weighting given to the data that comes from the Eurodac system? I have spoken to the Minister about this before. He said that it will come up as an applicant goes through the immigration system as normal, but can it be challenged? Can someone appeal a decision? Is the data treated as the sole fact? What rights do people have to interrogate the mechanisms of how it is being assessed? Could we have situations where people are detained having given their information and gone through the Eurodac system because they do not agree with what it has said in relation to them?
In terms of the age assessment piece, the Minister described how the data is to be taken, and we know that the guardians with the 30 children they are meant to be minding will be there. I do not think someone can advocate for the child not do it. However, there is a concern because in the Bill age assessment is triggered by the concerns of an official. There are very broad grounds that can trigger an age assessment. One thing that we are concerned about is that is does not say that the biometric data will solely be just about checking matches with the Eurodac system. Is there a danger of that biometric data being used when officials are deciding what a 21-year-old looks like, or a 16-year-old, or an 18-year-old? The Minister may shake his head, but we do not know. This a new provision that has been brought in. It is a new system using new technologies and we are absolutely entitled to seek assurances as to the potential ways that it might be used. The fact that an age assessment may not just be used as a last resort, as was said, but can be triggered quite broadly under the Bill, I am concerned that biometric data could trigger an age assessment. Will the Minister clarify that as it would be useful? There is a sense that this is a bit of a black box in terms of what is going to happen with the Eurodac system. We all know that it is the compulsory thing that is going to happen to everybody who lands, but we do not know what exactly it will be checked against. Will it just be a list of individual names because one of the things it will check for is nationality? Will it just be around checking if an individual is in the Eurodac system? Will that be its sole purpose? Will it be used to check or assess anything else? What weighting will it be given, not just in the process, but previous to and around the process? Those are the questions that we legitimately have about what is a new 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