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

This relates to the same section as amendment No. 29, which has been ruled out of order. When Committee Stage is guillotined and it is made impossible to speak to sections, including sections to which the Government proposed very large amendments at a late stage, we are told that, because these issues did not arise on Committee Stage, they cannot be raised on Report Stage. It again points to a really fundamental undermining of the democratic process when we curtail debate at a key point. I would also say that I did speak to this issue, the issue of healthcare professionals. I did speak about healthcare. It was something that I named. I did not get to speak to my amendments on it because we did not get to speak to approximately 200 amendments, but I did speak about the issue. That is what we have all had to do today. We have had to speak to fundamental issues. That is what Second Stage is for. We should not all have to try to speak to a series of fundamental issues as if we were on a Second Stage debate because we are being precluded from dealing with them in sequence and in proper order.
That was a really important amendment because the healthcare entitlement introduced in section 76 has a lot of gaps. Again, there are questions as to who would be performing the functions of healthcare professionals under this provision. A wide range of individuals are allowed for outside of registered doctors and nurses and there is a very worrying component within section 70 of the Bill, which explicitly excludes persons subject to a deportation order from healthcare entitlements. There is also no question of training in terms of the Department of Health. This is an example of the practicalities of how this works out for the individual human cases. Is a person who needs medication but has been told they are due to be deported to be without medication for the period of time they are waiting? What is the consequence of that for them? For the persons who will have key responsibilities in relation to those who have experienced rape, torture, violence and so on, there are no mechanisms for them to get expertise and training to identify issues.
To get back to what the Minister said and the simple question of an account being different, we know that, in the case of certain crimes and offences that people have experienced, it is a trauma response to give a different account at first, perhaps because they have come from an authoritarian state and are used to guarding and being protective of certain information. The information may then expand or change. They may be seeking to protect others at a given point of contact. You need a whole range of expertise to unpack and engage with the healthcare needs and application process of persons who have experienced significant violence and trauma in the past.
Again, we are not going to get to speak to any of that. There is also the issue of transfers at short notice. We have had examples of heart attacks and pregnant women being moved in their third trimester. We may not come to amendment No. 105, which relates to treatment during transfers or deportation.
Moving on to amendment No. 30, the amendment deletes the subsection that allows a civil servant, immigration officer or garda to issue a direction. The Minister said the international protection office would be getting this information. This is where we are trying to put in a requirement that those who are told they must attend would be informed of that in a language they can reasonably be expected to understand. The Minister correctly pointed out that appropriate language expertise is available at the International Protection Office. Our concern is that the Bill allows for quite a lot of people to give that direction.
It does not specify that that direction would be adhered to in the International Protection Office or under the remit of a support structure where language, etc., would be catered for. It allows for civil servants, immigration officers or gardaí to give the direction in a number of situations. Specifically, and this is something that does not fit the narrative we have been given, it relates to a lawfully resident person who is already registered under the Immigration Act. When someone arrives, it is reasonable that we would ask them to go to the screening centre, as we have heard, but the Bill allows for a person already lawfully resident under the Immigration Act, or someone not entering the application process for international protection, to be directed to go to a centre. Those who may be lawfully resident here on, say, a working visa, student visa or another permit, and who may be on their route to citizenship, can be directed to travel to a screening centre also.
The Government has suggested it is only about international protection, but the fact that other kinds of people are included is concerning. This is the kind of thing we have seen in the United States in the form of fishing expeditions, whereby whole groups of people are checked for identity and nationality, even though they have already been through the protection system or another part of the immigration system and are lawfully resident. That is the kind of thing that creates fear and allows for profiling. It allows for a situation whereby immigration officers, potentially private or contracted, can detain anybody who is not an Irish citizen in a screening centre while being checked. What a tool of intimidation that is. We see it in the United States. Parks where families would always have gone on picnics or had birthday parties are now kind of empty at the weekends because people are afraid. People become afraid to be out and, even though lawfully resident, to participate in public life. They feel vulnerable to being snatched or subjected to a process such as that in a screening centre.
Crucially, the grounds are not the public interest. We have heard about balancing things in the public interest, but the grounds on which a legally resident person who is not necessarily an asylum applicant can be detained and required to go to a screening centre, under threat of an offence, are in the interest of public policy; however, public policy is not the same as the public interest. In respect of many laws, we talk about the public interest, where it may apply and where there is precedent. The courts determine it and balance many factors when deciding on it. Public policy is saying, "We want to". It can literally involve the Cabinet saying it has decided something is its new policy. It can change from not liking liquified natural gas to liking it as a matter of public policy. The President in the United States can say he is really worried about Somali people, does not like them and will be very prejudiced against them, effectively wanting them to be taken in and given a hard time.
Public policy can literally be anything. It is a vague, wide-ranging term. It is not law that a government proposes and puts to the test of the Oireachtas, or fast-tracks in the Oireachtas, as in this case, nor is it the public interest, which involves precedent, balance and the courts. Rather, it is potentially the whim of any Minister for justice, although maybe not the current one. A Minister may say a new policy is this or that. These are the grounds on which people can be forced to go to a screening centre.
Section 193 relates to the grounds on which the Minister may decide not to permit family reunification and section 196 relates to the grounds on which the Minister may decide not to issue a travel document. Section 206 relates to the power to disregard an exemption a person may have to being deported, and section 180 to not allowing the submission of evidence to an appeals tribunal. The Minister can decide, on public policy grounds, not to allow family reunification. This is where we find the danger we heard about earlier, related to the idea of chasing the right. If a poll states an extreme right-wing candidate is running in a by-election, does one chase that? Do we come up with and apply a few new, quick, hard public policies that look tough, have them impact on people's lives and say we are changing family reunification, as we see the Bill is doing? Do we have grounds not to issue travel documents and to disregard deportation exemptions? This is an area that really brings the ECHR into question. Section 180 alludes to not allowing the submission of evidence to an appeals tribunal. We can decide the legal safeguard of an appeals tribunal is not in accordance with public policy. Where a lawfully resident individual who is not an applicant for asylum is asked to go to a screening centre and told he or she has been found against because he or she is on Eurodac, can the Minister decline, on public policy grounds, information on how that Eurodac decision or information or opinion was arrived at? What would be the position on consideration by an appeals tribunal? What kind of information does the Minister plan not to allow as evidence by our courts system or an appeals tribunal within the immigration system? These are very discretionary powers and they do not have a clear definition. Public policy can mean anything and this is a serious problem.
Amendment No. 33 is the one I have already spoken about. It relates to a matter we discussed previously, namely, the need to inform a person in danger of committing an offence if they do not go to a screening centre in a language they can understand. The Minister made the point that they would get that if they were being told at the International Protection Office, but I make the point that the Bill allows for them to be told by a large number of individuals, not necessarily at an international protection office.

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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