International Protection Bill 2026: From the Seanad Dail Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan I will make a couple of broad remarks that I think have been emphasised by the fact that at this Stage, the last Stage in the Oireachtas, the Minister has to bring forward further, albeit technical, changes to this legislation. The Minister's entire approach to this legislation has verged on the reckless. It is absolutely reckless in terms of his refusal to allow proper scrutiny of a piece of legislation that he has described as the most comprehensive legislation dealing with migration in decades. The approach has been guided not by what is in the best interests of the Irish people or delivering an international protection system that works and resolves the dysfunction that the parties of Government have created, but has been directed solely and entirely by the need to live up to the provisions of the EU migration and asylum pact. This is a pact which Sinn Féin told the Government there was no need to sign up to and which undermines Irish sovereignty and our ability to manage our migration system. It is a pact that takes no account of the unique circumstances of this nation, which is a nation divided, with one part within the European Union's structures and the other part operating outside them. It is a pact that takes no account of the fact that we operate within a common travel area with a state that is not part of the EU framework or part of the pact. In its efforts to through bull a Bill with the sole intention of adhering to the terms of the EU pact, the Government has been absolutely haphazard in its approach. It has undermined the role of Oireachtas at every turn. I will remind the House of that approach. The first stage was the heads of the Bill being brought before the Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. In an effort to try to facilitate the Department with what is comprehensive legislation, the committee tried to deal with it as quickly as possible. The testimony and written submissions of all the witnesses may have come from different perspectives, but they all agreed that the Government’s approach was shambolic, that the heads of the Bill were incomplete and that this would not allow proper scrutiny to take place. The pre-legislative scrutiny report agreed across party lines set out very clearly that the decision of the Government to tie us in, lock, stock and barrel, to the EU migration and asylum pact was completely wrong, called on the Government parties to try to reconsider and set out very clearly that the gaps in the heads of the Bill meant it was not possible to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government ignored all of that and brought forward a comprehensive 200-page Bill. Before the Dáil had even finished the Second Stage debate, the deadline for amendments had already passed. As a result, Second Stage counted for nothing. It did not matter what any Member of this House contributed to that debate, including, perhaps, inspiring amendments from either the Government or the Opposition. It was all just a box-ticking exercise. The list of proposed Committee Stage amendments was as comprehensive as you will see, but the Government guillotined the debate and refused to allow the amendments to be discussed and analysed in the place where they should have been, which is the committee rooms of these Houses. The Government guillotined and curtailed the debate on the legislation. This was despite the fact most of the amendments to the Bill, which had just gone through Second Stage, were put forward by the Minister. Despite there being numerous important amendments that this House should have had the opportunity to discuss, the Minister refused to allow that to happen and, indeed, criticised Members of this House for spending too long, as he saw it, discussing some amendments. Those amendments, if I may remind the Minister, related to community engagement, community impact assessment and to the gross profiteering taking place within the international protection and accommodation system and the obscene amount of being spent on that accommodation. Last year alone, €1.3 billion, for which there is no transparency or accountability, was spent on IPAS accommodation. There were amendments to address the failings of the legislation and the EU pact and to address the glaring black hole that is the common travel area and its implications for the Bill. The Minister criticised Members for spending time discussing those amendments when it was he who refused to allow them be debated in committee, and he then imposed a guillotine. The Bill then went to the Seanad. It is now back here for a debate that will last just three hours. What has the Minister brought forward? There are 90 pages of amendments. Who are they from? Some 267 of them have been tabled by the Minister. This is the final part of the debate on the Bill. Once again, rather than detailed scrutiny, that debate is to be limited to three hours. That is absolutely disgraceful. The Minister has brought forward technical amendments, but there is no way the public can be confident that there are not other gaps in the legislation. The difficulty is that after today, the next gap or gaps - and they will probably be glaring gaps - will be identified not by an elected representative of the people but by a judge in the High Court. I have predicted on every Stage that this legislation and the Minister’s approach to it are going to result in High Court cases. I believe some of them will be successful. There is no way anybody can say that there has been proper democratic scrutiny of this legislation because the Government has prevented it. Ultimately, this will result in infringement proceedings at European Commission level because the Minister has included provisions in this legislation that he has no ability to deliver. There is no confidence regarding the time it takes to process applications and to do so fairly. All the evidence in this regard points to a dysfunction that is embedded in the IPAS system. There is not a chance that anybody can have confidence in decisions being enforced. As for any prospect that the matter of the obscene sums of money that have been spent and, I would argue, wasted as a result of the Government's mismanagement will be addressed, nobody can have confidence that this will happen because it has refused, time and again, to put in place mechanisms that will allow transparency in the form of the publication of IPAS contracts and to allow communities to have a real say in what happens. Something incredibly interesting from the past couple of weeks was seeing Simon Harris - he was actually having a go at the Minister - saying communities should have a say in what happens in their areas in the context of IPAS centres. He voted against amendments to that effect in this House just a number of weeks ago, but the good news is that, if we get to it, there is an amendment today that will allow that very provision. What he says is his affair, but it might be just another case of Simon says one thing and Simon does the exact opposite. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-15