Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central Tá an méid atá ráite ag an Teachta dochreidte. Níl sí macánta faoin cheist seo in aon chor. Níl sí ceart ach an oiread. Caithfidh mé a rá go bhfuil cúrsaí polaitíochta i gceist aici. Níl sí i ndáiríre in aon chor maidir leis an gceist seo. The Deputy is being very dishonest in her presentation of this issue. She is being deliberately manipulative and is endeavouring to win votes on the back of the migration issue. The problem for Sinn Féin is that it is flip-flopping all over the place. Sometimes when the far left and the far right unite against legislation, I think we have hit the right spot. Sinn Féin does not know which way to turn or which way to jump at any given time on this issue because Deputy McDonald's assertion that her party has opposed the asylum pact from the very beginning is simply not true. Sinn Féin voted in favour of opting into two parts of the pact in the European Parliament in April 2024 through its MEP Chris MacManus - the asylum and migration management regulation and the Eurodac regulation. Eurodac is the EU's asylum and migration database and is the corner-stone of the implementation of the EU pact on asylum and migration. Of course, Sinn Féin turned tack again and changed its position when the International Protection Act came before the House. It was not rushed through the House. There was pre-legislative scrutiny, a long debate on Second Stage and it went through Committee Stage. It is a very comprehensive piece of legislation. We are not ceding any sovereignty. We are not giving away any decision-making powers. Irish officials will still make decisions on whether applicants are granted protection status, An Garda Síochána will still police our borders and Ireland will still control our deportation process, so the pact does not result in Ireland giving up its sovereignty in the area of immigration and no amount of empty, shallow soundbites will change that reality and that truth. That is all Sinn Féin is about - all its postings and the online stuff. It is as if this Act was never debated in the Dáil. A flurry of activity was created last week by all sorts online and filling everyone's emails about something desperate that is going to happen in the next week because of this pact coming in. The Act has been signed off on by the President following its passage through the House. We have never had a situation where legislation was passed and an attempt was made to try and fool the people into believing that it is all going to happen this week, when in fact this has been debated at great length in the House already. The Act the Minister brought through the House provides for faster processing, including a border procedure for applicants to have all decisions and appeals concluded within three months. The Deputy referenced the chief appeals officer to the tribunal for asylum seekers as if it was the first time ever. How dishonest is she prepared to be when she is talking about these issues in the House? She knows that the new Act is bringing in a new appeals process, but the existing appeals process under the old framework continues apace to deal with all of the cases that were applied for prior to the introduction of this Act. The Deputy knows that and the Sinn Féin spokespeople know that, yet you come in here and deliberately distort the truth in terms of the legislation. It is about time you stopped playing these kind of games because we are dealing with people here too - human beings - and all Sinn Féin is interested in is exploiting it for electoral advantage. However, Sinn Féin's problem is that when the far right start shouting, it goes over there and genuflects and when the far left does it, it throws in a few things about human rights and so on. --- 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/2026-06-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-09