International Protection Bill 2026: From the Seanad
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-15
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

-----I would love for him to listen to himself sometimes, because he has just set out a paradox in terms of his position. He said his Department publishes the nationalities of people seeking international protection on a weekly basis and, on the other hand, he said it would be too burdensome for his Department to collate and publish their origin in terms of visa route. The information would be in exactly the same place. It would be in the application that was made. When people make an application, they state whether they have been in the State on another visa or come through a third country and what the country of origin was. It is just a matter of changing the software so the information is collated. If there is a logical reason - other than it being too much hassle - not to publish this information, the Minister should just say so. This is the problem.
With no disrespect to anyone in the Minister's Department, the Irish public does not trust the Department to manage migration. They certainly do not trust it to manage international protection and the more areas the Minister hides from accountability and transparency and the divulging of information, the more it is so. No one wants information about individuals or families; of course not. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about general information to inform public policy. I have said it again. The Minister clearly does not listen to me because I have said about six times during the course of all these debates that I accept it is very likely that a significant proportion of international applicants come through the common travel area.
I accept it is probably a majority and potentially a substantial majority. I accept all of those things. However, the truth of the matter is I cannot say that for sure because the Minister will not give me the evidence that would allow someone to say that for sure. I am not the person who points and says figures like 90%, 85% or 80%. It is the Minister for justice and different Government Ministers who repeatedly cite different figures, which is a bit bizarre in itself. The Minister keeps repeating that but will not provide the public with the data. He says, "Oh well, we can deduct that, take A from B and end up with C", which allows us to think this is probably the situation.
It just points to the dysfunction. It points to a haphazard approach that has been the hallmark of how this system has been managed and has led to all the public distrust in the system. What I am trying to do is encourage the Minister to change the approach. Get away from the secrecy. Get away from building walls between information and the public and start building trust again in this area.

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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