2026-02-25

Gabhaim buíochas as an deis labhartha ar an ábhar agus ar an reachtaíocht seo atá os comhair na Dála anocht agus muid ag plé le Céim an Choiste. Is mór an trua é, mar atá ráite ag mo chomhghleacaithe, go bhfuil seo á bhrú chun tosaigh agus nach bhfuil deis ag an gcoiste dlí agus cirt féin mionscrúdú a dhéanamh ar seo. Mar a dúirt daoine eile an tseachtain seo caite, tá sé soiléir nach mbeidh go leor ama againn dul tríd na moltaí agus leasuithe uile atá curtha chun tosaigh ag mo chomhghleacaí, an Teachta Carthy, agus ag daoine eile sa Fhreasúra mar níl go leor ama á leagan amach fá choinne seo. Léiríonn sé sin an cinneadh contráilte atá déanta ag an Rialtas seo gan cead a thabhairt don choiste dlí agus cirt mionscrúdú a dhéanamh ar an reachtaíocht seo. Díreoidh mé isteach ar an bpríomhleasú atá curtha chun tosaigh agus atáimid ag plé anseo, leasú Uimh. 14. I ndáiríre, is é an rud atá á lorg anseo ná giota beag réasúin agus giota beag céille, agus go mbeidh pleanáil mar is ceart déanta ó thaobh cén áit a mbeidh ionadaithe cosanta idirnáisiúnta á lonnú sa Stát. Tá sé soiléir go dtí seo nach raibh aon phleanáil fá dtaobh de seo mar go raibh na haonaid seo oscailte cibé áit a raibh siad ar fáil, gan aon díriú isteach ar an deacracht a bheadh ann ó thaobh na gceantar sin. B'fhéidir, mar a chuala muid, gurb é an teach ósta deireanach a bhí sa bhaile. B'fhéidir go raibh fadhb ann ó thaobh ganntanas áiteanna sna scoileanna ná ó thaobh dochtúirí agus a leithéid sin. B'fhéidir gur lonnaíodh iad i gcorráiteanna nach raibh na fadhbanna sin, ach an rud atá a fhios againn ná ní raibh a fhios ag an Aire ná an Rialtas dóigh amháin nó dóigh eile mar ní raibh sé sin mar pháirt de na coinníollacha fá choinne na hionaid seo a lonnú mar ní raibh scrúdú ar bith á dhéanamh ar na ceantair sin. An rud atá á rá ag mo chomhghleacaí, an Teachta Carthy, ná sula mbeidh aon ionad úr oscailte ar fud an Stáit go mbeidh measúnú déanta ar an impleacht ar na pobail ina bhfuil siad lonnaithe. Mar pháirt de sin, ba chóir go mbeimis ag amharc ar cé mhéad duine a bheadh san ionad seo agus cad iad na seirbhísí áitiúla atá ar fáil. Dá mbeadh impleachtaí ann do na seirbhísí áitiúla sin, ba chóir go mbeadh plean ann le dul i ngleic leis an phobal agus a chomhairle agus a thuairimí a fháil. Ba chóir labhairt leis an phobal óna thaobh seo. Lena chois sin, ba chóir go mbeidh measúnú ag an Roinn ar an leibhéal de mhíbhuntáiste sa cheantar. Mar atá a fhios againn, níl achan pháirt den tír mar an gcéanna. Tá codanna den tír buailte níos troime. Tá níos mó míbhuntáiste i roinnt ceantar ná mar atá i gceantair eile. Tá cinneadh le déanamh ag an Stát. Ar chóir na hionaid seo a bheith lonnaithe i gceantair a bhfuil fadhbanna míbhuntáiste acu? Is é ár dtuairim nár chóir. Sula mbeadh aon mholadh á chur chun tosaigh ó thaobh ionad mar seo a lonnú i gceantar, ba chóir go mbeadh an measúnú seo foilsithe agus próiseas comhairliúcháin ann leis an phobal. Níor chóir go mbeadh aon ionad nua oscailte sula mbeadh an próiseas comhairliúcháin sin thart agus an tuairim sin foilsithe. Mar a dúirt mé, is leasú réasúnta agus polasaí réasúnta é seo. Muna nglacann an Rialtas leis seo, tá sé ag rá gur cuma leis cad iad na fadhbanna sa cheantar, gur cuma leis muna bhfuil spásanna scoile ann do na páistí a bheadh lonnaithe san ionad agus gur cuma leis faoin bhrú a bheadh á chur ar sheirbhísí dochtúra agus a leithéid. Tá go leor brú ar na seirbhísí sin cheana. Nílim ag cur locht ar dhaoine atá ag cuardach cosaint ón tír seo ach caithfear é sin a chur san áireamh. Má tá tú ag iarraidh amharc ar shampla maith den dóigh ina dhearna an Rialtas brachán de seo, ba chóir amharc ar Dhún na nGall. Is é Dún na nGall an contae is mó atá faoi mhíbhuntáiste sa tír. Is é Dún na nGall an contae is mó sa tír a bhfuil ioncam íseal ag a dhaonra. Is é Dún na nGall an contae is mó a bhfuil cártaí leighis ag daoine. Léiríonn sé sin arís an ráta míbhuntáiste. Is é Dún na nGall an contae nach bhfaighidh tú ciliméadar de dhébhealach, mótarbhealach, iarnród ná líne gháis ann. Níl a leithéid againn sa chontae mar go bhfuil infreastruchtúr an chontae iontach olc. Is é Dún na nGall an contae a dhéanann suas 3% de dhaonra an Stát ach, nuair a tháinig slua mór daoine ón Úcráin agus ó thíortha eile ag cuardach cosaint ón tír seo, rinne an Rialtas cinneadh níos mó daoine a chur isteach i nDún na nGall ná i gcontae ar bith eile. Cén réasún atá leis an pholasaí sin? Cuireadh duine as gach aon dosaen a tháinig ón Úcráin isteach i nDún na nGall. Dá ndéanfaí an rud céanna i mBaile Átha Cliath, bheadh thart ar 110,000 duine as an Úcráin sa chontae. Ní sin an rud atá ag tarlú. Ní hamháin daoine ón Úcráin atá i gceist. Má amharcann muid ar IPAS agus ar na daoine atá ag teacht ag cuardach cosanta, caithfidh siad dul trí phróiseas. Tá a fhios againn nach bhfuil cead fanacht sa tír ag an mhórchuid de dhaoine a théann tríd an phróiseas. Arís, is é an cinneadh a rinne an Rialtas seo ná an líon is mó daoine in aon chontae ar bith taobh amuigh de Bhaile Átha Cliath a chur isteach i nDún na nGall. Ní dhéanann sé sin ciall. Is é sin an rud faoina bhfuil an leasú seo ag caint. Tá sé ag caint faoi phleanáil cheart agus faoi ghuth an phobail agus comhairle an phobail a bheith lárnach in aon pholasaí atá ag an Rialtas ó thaobh ionad nua a lonnú i gceantar ar bith. This amendment is sensible. I commend Deputy Carthy on tabling it and the other amendments he tabled on behalf of Sinn Féin. The only pity is how the Government has dealt with this legislation. I raised the issue of the committee not being able to scrutinise the Bill in the detail it wanted to. This has left us in a position where we will not be able to scrutinise all of the amendments to or all sections of the legislation because the Government is playing to the tune of Europe, having signed up to a pact which was never in the interest of this State, or at least not in its entirety. It is now caught by the timeframes and we have legislation we cannot properly scrutinise. Outside of that, if we forget about the timeframes and the lack of scrutiny, the key issue in this amendment makes perfect sense. It is about ensuring that new accommodation centres will only be established in the State after a community impact assessment has been done. That does not mean there is a block on a centre; it just means an assessment has to be carried out. There are places in the State that are under more pressure than others and places where services are more plentiful than in others. There are also places that have issues, perhaps with the number of people already there seeking international protection or temporary protection, as applies to Ukrainians. The Government seems to be talking about rejecting that sensible proposal. I do not understand why. By rejecting it, the Government is basically saying it rejects the idea that we should consult with communities, listen to them, have any notion of services or the impact a new centre would have on services, the impact of the level of deprivation that exists in an area and the impact a centre may or may not have on that level of deprivation. What the Government is talking about doing makes no sense. When one looks at what has happened heretofore, it is just a complete and utter mess. I come from County Donegal. The facts unfortunately tell us that Donegal is the most deprived county in the Twenty-six Counties. It has the highest rate of unemployment and deprivation, the highest concentration of medical cards and the worst infrastructure in the State. You will not find a kilometre of motorway, dual carriageway, gas pipeline or train line because they do not exist. We are a county under serious pressure and the most deprived county in the State. What did the Government decide to do to deal with an influx of people who came from Ukraine seeking refuge, and need support and refuge, and those applying for international protection? It was not the case that Donegal, even though it was the most deprived county, would take what could be argued is its fair share. One in 12 people who came here from Ukraine under temporary protection ended up in Donegal, the most deprived county in Ireland. If the same statistics were applied to Dublin, there would be 110,000 Ukrainians. To have 8% or one in 12 makes no sense. Even if you look at a more granular level, some of those were concentrated in certain parts of the county. It makes no sense because there was no planning and no recognition that it is a locality that might be under serious pressure or, with the numbers already there, that additional numbers would put pressure on services, places in schools or, indeed, social cohesion. There was no reference to that. The Department, the Minister and the Government were fixated on one thing, namely, which person who wants to become a millionaire overnight is offering a property. That was it. No other questions were asked. Community engagement was a nonsense. They phoned up, told you there was a contract signed for a centre and no matter what, even if you thought it was not the right place, it did not matter. That is how the Government handled where individuals who came from Ukraine are to be located. The same thing happened again with IPAS. Donegal, out of all the counties, has the highest number of people applying for international protection. Of all those who have come here, 7% have gone to Donegal. This is nuts from a planning point of view. From a planning point of view, it is as if the Government was to sit down and just say it has an issue of where to locate people and that it will put most of them in the most deprived county in the country; in the county that does not have rail, does not have motorway and that has so many different challenges. It made no sense from a planning point of view. There are other issues there, which should have been taken into account in relation to any assessment that would be carried out here. An assessment is not a block. An assessment is just about looking at what is on the ground, what is there already, the numbers that are there and the services that are there, whether they already under pressure and if maybe a bit too much has been done there and so on. In my county of Donegal, I live in a region that is linguistically rich in terms of the Irish language. The Gaeltacht is tobar na Gaeilge. We will not have an Irish language in this country if we do not have Gaeltacht communities and places that speak Irish on a daily basis. That does not mean to say that people cannot come in and live in relation to Gaeltacht areas. I am not saying that, but that would be part of an assessment that would be carried out regarding this. If we look at it now, we have social housing development in the Gaeltacht. In every single social development in the Gaeltacht in Donegal, 80% of the houses have to be given to Irish speakers who are fluent in Irish and can reach a certain standard in terms of Irish. That is one of arm of government saying that for those people who have a housing need, and there are people in the Gaeltacht who cannot speak Irish and have a housing need who also need to be accommodated, the policy, which this Government supports, is that there are criteria there. Why are there criteria? It is because there are so many studies telling us that the Gaeltacht is dying and will not survive and one thing we need to do is to protect the Gaeltacht in terms of a hub where Irish is spoken as much as possible on a daily basis. How do we dilute that? It is more people coming into the area who cannot speak the language or are not willing to speak the language. I met with the Polish ambassador earlier on. I said that many of my young son's friends are Polish who have gone to his school. They speak Polish at home. They speak Gaeilge to their friends. English is the third language, which is beautiful to see. That is the same with some of the Ukrainians who are here as well. These are things that should be captured in relation to any assessment. Why under God would we not carry out an assessment? If the Government says that it will not carry out this assessment, then it is reverting to this chaotic situation where it was just left to those speculators and people who wanted to make millions overnight. Some people went in and provided accommodation. Let us be clear, they provided accommodation because people were seeking refuge and people needed to be housed. I take that on 100%. I am not tarring everyone with the same brush. But by God I will tell you there are plenty of people, and we know their names, who were unscrupulous and who were just talking about making millions on the back of the misery that has happened. They did not care in relation to the impact of local communities, or indeed, the places, the conditions and some of the treatment of those people within the centres that they facilitated. I use Donegal as an example of how the worst planning has happened in the last while. I spoke to the previous Minister in relation to this many times. In my community in Donegal and in Gweedore, we had a centre for decades. There were no issues whatsoever. There were no issues for a long time. It kept on going and more and more pressure was put on individuals, services and areas. Even though we were telling the Government that social cohesion and these issues were causing strains, it did not matter. This amendment is sensible. It is the appropriate thing to do. We are dealing with this amendment in relation to centres of international protection. It is not Ukrainians, but I used the argument of Ukrainians to talk about the actual additional pressure that has placed in relation to regions. We could talk about other regions as well, but Donegal is probably the one that is the most acute. At the heart of all of this is the issue of the failure of the Government. That cannot be taken be away from this. Why is there an accommodation crisis in relation to international protection in this State? It is because the Government still has not done its job. It still has not got a handle in relation to processing times. No harm to the Minister, the one thing about him is that he has been on the media talking about this quite a lot, but the fact unfortunately is that processing times have got worse in the past year. From application time to appeal, it is now longer than it was last year. What is it now?

Stick to the amendment, Deputy.

It is the amendment. IPAS accommodation in the numbers that are required would not be required if processing happened. The vast majority of people who have applied based on past experience are not entitled to protection here. Therefore, if processing time was quickened up, then they would not need the accommodation that is here. The Government does not need a European pact to get its act together in relation to this. There was nothing stopping the Government in the past year to fix the processing time. The evidence is now that it is 14 months from initial application and 12 and a half months for appeal. It is 26 and a half months from initial application to the end of an appeal which is longer than it was in 2024. The Government is going backwards in relation to this. This is at the very core of it. It is about fixing a process that has been broken for many years. People who have applied here for international protection are not given the decision that they are entitled to protection in time and then supported and integrated into our community. They have to wait and wait and wait. There are others, which is unfortunately the majority of cases according to the statistics, who were never entitled to protection here anyway, but it has taken two and a half years for a decision to be made in relation to the initial application and the appeal that they may lodge. That goes to the core of what is there. I commend the amendment. It is sensible. The Government should not fear the voice of the public. It should not fear engaging with communities. It should not fear carrying out an assessment in relation to any type of centre that is being located and whether this is the best place or maybe it is within boundaries of countries that there is another place that is more suitable.

In here last week for several hours, a number of TDs took up the Government on some egregious things that it is bringing in, particularly in relation to children being detained and some really negative attacks on human rights that this Bill represents. Regarding this amendment, I cannot support it as it is currently worded. I do not agree that before any accommodation is provided for the IPAS services that there would have to be this, this, this, this and this. For example, there was an IPAS centre in Blanchardstown. Nobody even knew about it. It was working perfectly well. The people there were working with the Blanchardstown Tidy Towns on a Saturday morning making the village look good. It was an outlet for them. They were trying to integrate into the community. The far right councillor in the area got word of it and whipped up a storm. This is a recipe for the far right to build in areas. It is disappointing to see this coming from Sinn Féin. The party knows that this would be a recipe for creating new far right councillors, to be frank. It is not just that, we should have a discussion about community engagement. I have no issue with that because there has to be a level of community engagement. To suggest that this would have to be done before any new accommodation could be provided is adding to the negative feeling around any international protection applicants. I raised a case last week of an international protection applicant. They were people in a local Blanchardstown hotel. They were being moved to Mayo. I raised it with the Minister. To give an example, the woman whose case I raised whose child has special needs actually had a major panic attack. She is also diabetic and became so ill that she could not be moved. She ended up being transferred to Dublin. What I am saying is that there are real live human beings and families, ordinary people from other countries, in international protection. This just further demonises people. The Government is responding to the far right by moving in a much more overtly racist direction but other parties are also responding in different ways. How to take on the far right and racism is the most important political issue in the world right now bar none. We have to call it out wherever it is. This amendment is a recipe for stoking up fear in communities. We do need discussions and community engagement of some kind. You could have discussions with different groups and different individuals in a community but to suggest that no IPAS accommodation can be provided for people just adds to the racism and fear that is operating in communities. I have a couple of things to say on this. On its own, this amendment could look quite innocent but I have seen a leaflet given out in Dublin Central that says that Sinn Féin will manage migration. To be honest, the leaflet uses some racist far-right talking points. It talks about profiteering. That is all a lot of Sinn Féin's speakers have talked about. I have heard them several times over the last week talking about people being made into millionaires and about global market forces deciding our migration policy. These really are far-right talking points. It is conspiracy stuff. There are words that are not mentioned at all in the leaflet. Racism is not mentioned at all in the leaflet distributed in Dublin Central.

That is not true.

The fear being experienced by minorities in this country, people who are working and living here, is not mentioned. None of Sinn Féin's speakers have mentioned it either. If Sinn Féin were to be fair, it would concede that most of the party's speakers have used their time to talk about profiteering and all of the other problems but have never focused on the racism being generated in society. All of the facts and figures show a rise in racism. To be very clear, I primarily blame the Government. Deputy Simon Harris has tried to blame minorities and refugees for the housing crisis. That is pitiable and abominable but it is really not surprising. If Sinn Féin thinks this is going to push back against its supporters leaning into racism, it really is not. It actually just lends credibility to those ideas. Any honest assessment of a leaflet like that in conjunction with this amendment would agree. We have to point to the wealth that exists in this society. This Government has a record budget surplus but it has never used it to resolve the housing crisis. We have had a housing crisis for 12 or 13 years now, since way before the recent migration. Migration has also gone down. I have heard different speakers in the Dáil talking about deportations. Being the subject of a deportation order does not mean a person is a criminal. Some of what Sinn Féin has put in this leaflet is not in line with some of its TDs' views. Some of those TDs have taken up this issue quite well in different areas. However, this leaflet is totally disingenuous stuff. Putting this out in communities just feeds into the whole narrative of refugees being a major problem. There are 18 billionaires on this planet who control half the wealth. There is huge wealth in this country that could be used to build homes, to sort out the healthcare system and to provide the schools that we need without scapegoating minorities and people who have fled countries for the most difficult reasons. There are other parties and individuals in here who do nothing but demonise people every time migration comes up. I helped members of the Indian community organise a march last summer following attacks on Indian members of our community. Every single one of them reported a climate of increased racism in this country. All of this feeds into it. It is just very unfair. We have to call out racism wherever it is. I say to those who are meant to be standing on the left that racism is a key issue for the left. If you do not take a firm stance against it and if you start using some of the arguments of the far right and racists, you will not fight them off. I think Sinn Féin believes it will and that is why it is doing this but I cannot support this amendment. It is completely and utterly a recipe for the far right to stoke up fear and to grow in every single community in the area. If we looked through the record and counted up the words of most of the Sinn Féin TDs, we would see that they have spent their time complaining. I am not saying there are not issues in different communities and areas. There obviously are but the Sinn Féin speakers' whole thing was just an attack on Ukrainians, blaming them for a great many issues. Donegal has been a deprived county for decades.

I did not blame Ukrainians. The Deputy should withdraw that. I did not blame them. The Deputy should have listened to what I said.

I am sorry; Deputy Doherty did not blame Ukrainians. Donegal has also suffered massive emigration so it could do with people coming in, but only if the investment is put in. However, Deputy Doherty never mentioned that. He never mentioned that communities could get together and demand massive investment if IPAS centres are provided. I did not hear him say that at any point.

It is about proper planning.

Address your remarks through the Chair, please.

The last thing I would say is that-----

If you are against that, it is fine, but it is about proper planning.

We have had debates here previously about supports for Ukrainians being reduced and I also participated in a debate on the radio about that issue. We know the position of different parties in the Dáil. Sinn Féin thinks they are affecting the housing crisis. The statistics came out and showed that most of the people who were taking Ukrainians into their homes were not landlords and would never be providing accommodation.

There are no statistics to that effect.

There were loads of statistics to that effect. I spoke in the debate at the time.

There are no statistics to that effect.

They do not exist.

If Deputy Doherty does not mind, his party has loads of TDs and I am sure they will all-----

Will the Deputy address the amendment please?

What you are saying is not true but carry on.

What I am saying is true.

It actually is not.

These statistics were provided by the Red Cross. I debated this with Sinn Féin's housing spokesperson on RTÉ radio. There is an implication that refugees are affecting the housing market. That has been said lots of times. It has been said about Donegal. They are not. Sinn Féin needs to point out the source of the housing crisis. It is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael handing things over to vulture funds. We should not blame minorities.

Last week, I sat in and listened to much of the debate on this particular amendment. I agreed with a lot of it. I agree that Government made an absolute mess of this entire issue. There was a lack of preparedness. The Government did not take on board repeated warnings and repeated recommendations as to what it and the country needed to do to house and process asylum seekers. I absolutely agree that what the Government has done is to funnel huge profits to developers rather than build the public services and public facilities that we need. I agree that the lack of communication we have seen caused huge problems in communities. It could have been handled much better. Once an IPAS centre went into an area, there was a real opportunity to bring in supports for that area, but that did not happen. That certainly would have assisted. A lot of the difficulties that we saw within communities were fuelled by the Government - public representatives who did not back the Government's policy and spent most of their time out in communities arguing against it and creating division. They really did not show any leadership in this. There was also a big problem with misinformation, whether online or in public forums. That was never countered either by the Government or by those public representatives. There were a lot of problems in how the Government has handled the issue. There was a lot in what the Sinn Féin representatives said last week. When you are trying to communicate something, you do not just communicate by what is written down and what you actually say; you are communicating by your tone. You also communicate your message by what you do not say. What was not said last week by Sinn Féin was that in many areas the communities came out and supported those centres and they really got behind them. If I was someone who had been through the asylum process or who was currently in the asylum process, the impression I would get from TD after TD who spoke on it was that having asylum seekers in your community is the worst possible thing to happen to a community. That is the message I would have picked up from what Sinn Féin was saying. It was being seen and represented as a blight, putting huge pressure on communities. What Sinn Féin failed to do was to understand that, in many situations, a community can take on and really open their arms to people within the asylum process and to IPAS centres. If I look at my own county, I see the number of people who were quietly, often secretly, working in the background because they were afraid when there were really heightened tensions in the community. There were so many people working quietly in the background providing English classes and lifts, collecting clothes, and setting up the Sanctuary Runners.

Hear, hear.

People were working with those within the IPAS system and getting them involved in Tidy Towns. They were out painting railings. There were groups like Bray Welcomes, Wicklow Welcomes, Blessington Welcomes and Newtown Together - so many groups and people within communities who recognised that this situation was a difficult one and that there was no perfect answer, and that actually the best thing to do was to just try their best despite the Government making such a mess of it and making it the worst possible start for people. A lot of people in the community tried their best to make things better for those people in asylum centres. Something that was also not mentioned last week by the Sinn Féin TDs is that the people who are coming into our communities seeking asylum bring a lot to us. They bring a lot and they are working in our communities. A lot of the people who are in the IPAS centres began to work the second that they could apply for their work permit. Before they could get their work permit, they were out volunteering. They wanted to get involved in their new home. They wanted to participate and to contribute. Many of them are still working and living in Wicklow. They have built homes for themselves, started families and made lifelong friends, including the friends that they made among the locals who taught them English. They are still in contact with those people. These people who are coming into our country seeking refuge bring a lot and add an awful lot of value. I did not hear that last week from Sinn Féin. What the party was communicating last week was that IPAS and asylum seekers are nothing but a big problem and communities cannot be expected to integrate people or to work with them. That is wrong, because it sends a very clear message to many people. We know that a lot of people are going to take that message and run with it. They will terrorise and carry out racist attacks. The words that are spoken in here carry weight. We have to be so careful with the message we send.

Yes.

I am really disappointed with the message that was sent by Sinn Féin.

Well said.

The reason Sinn Féin can get away with sending that message is because the Government has failed. It failed to prepare. It failed to respect people's dignity, and it continues to do so. The Government created this situation where there is a vacuum of information and supports and that is feeding what we are seeing now. When we talk about social cohesion, the Minister is absolutely right, there is a real risk to social cohesion here but we can get this right now. We really can, but the debate we are having on this Bill is not the answer to getting this right. I ask the Minister to reflect on that. We all need to reflect on what kind of leadership we are showing here, the message that we are sending and what we would like to see in our communities. Some of us need to be more responsible in how we are dealing with this issue.

I listened carefully to the debate on this set of amendments last week on the concept of a community impact assessment. During the debate most speakers discussed the very real challenges they experienced in their own constituencies when faced with decisions to open emergency international protection accommodation - decisions that were made, for the most part, when I was Minister for integration. I wanted to come in on this amendment in particular to speak about how the State makes decisions about where IP accommodation is located and the speed with which it needs to make those decisions during a crisis situation. That is really important. I have read the provisions set out in this particular amendment. On the face of them, they appear neutral, but my concern with this amendment is that ultimately what a community impact assessment is about is achieving a clinical, reasoned decision that IP accommodation cannot be located in a particular area. My concern is that it is about finding a reason for a "No". I completely understand that. I completely understand the difficulties that political reps are faced with when they get a call from the community engagement team telling them of plans to locate international protection accommodation in their constituency or local electoral area. Ultimately what a Minister has to do, and what the State has to do, is find a "Yes". It has to find accommodation, particularly in emergency situations. The Minister has to meet the State's legal obligations. Those legal obligations were reiterated by the High Court in judgments again only last week. But the Minister also has to meet the State's moral obligations - not to leave vulnerable people on the streets, not to have families and children camping in tents, in the same way that male international protection applicants were left on our streets for far too long. The Minister, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, now face the challenge of accommodating people who are seeking international protection. That challenge has been made slightly more manageable by the decrease of about one third in the number of IP applicants who have been arriving seeking international protection since October 2024. Prior to that month, there was an average of approximately 1,500 people seeking international protection every month. Since then, on average, give or take, the average has fallen to about 1,000 people per month. It is still an incredibly difficult job. If there is one piece of agreement across this Chamber, it is this: the State has to move away from the huge reliance on the private providers of international protection accommodation. I had wanted to do that in my term. I had set out to do that in my term in office but I was not able to achieve that in light of the huge increase that we saw in the number of people seeking accommodation. In 2020, it was 1,500 people. By 2024, it was 18,500. We were dealing with that dramatic spike in accommodation need at the same time we were accommodating over 100,000 Ukrainians. I urge the Ministers, where now the numbers they are seeking accommodation for are slightly more manageable, to implement the accommodation plan that was agreed by the Government in 2024. The Ministers should use this time to begin that vital switch toward significant amounts of State-owned accommodation. They should put the same energy that they put into the deportation flights, into creating that charging regime for international protection applicants and making citizenship and family reunification that bit harder, into driving forward State-owned provision. By doing that, we do two really important things. We start to address the very fair critique of the level of money going into private providers. We start to address those key financial concerns. As well as that, the State will actually have control over where accommodation is located. That will allow the State to proactively plan where international protection applicants are housed, and, in doing so, it will actually allow the State to start to address the concerns that are probably at the basis of this particular amendment. They are concerns about capacity within communities and pressure on services. It will allow the targeting of additional supports. Driving forward State-owned provision of international accommodation has to be at the centre of this debate. I do not feel, whether it is in this discussion that we are having on this legislation, or the wider discussion about migration that we have been seeing since the new Government was appointed, that issue, which is key to addressing the concerns that this amendment is about, and wider concerns, that issue is not getting the attention it deserves.

Can I start by making a political point? The debate on amendment No. 15 has been an unusual one. The reason it has been unusual is not just because it has gone over for over 2.5 hours but obviously, a very concerted decision was made by TDs from Sinn Féin to speak, in many respects from scripted statements, in respect of this amendment. There were 11 Sinn Féin contributors to this motion. All of them spoke about the same issues in terms of IPAS. I agree there are many issues of concern in respect of IPAS but the standard language that we heard from all of the Sinn Féin contributors was that IPAS was about profiteering, that people were being ripped off, that local communities were being upended and there was no proper consultation. They are perfectly legitimate points of debate that can be made by Deputy Carthy, who is well able to make those statements in respect of this amendment, but the fact that they were repeated on 11 occasions makes me wonder what is the political purpose behind this from Sinn Féin. My own view is that Sinn Féin is very comfortable talking about IPAS because of the significant amounts of money that are being spent on it and because it can also be presented in a way that this is profiteering and in criticism of the Government. The main reason I suspect that Sinn Féin is comfortable speaking about IPAS, however, is they do not want to speak about the other important issues in this Bill. I will highlight this point briefly because I want to try to get on with the rest of the amendments here. I know what Deputy Kelly's argument will be in respect of amendments I have put down and what this Bill is. I know the same in respect of Deputy Gannon. When it comes to the broader issues of asylum applications and reforming the asylum laws, however, I do not know what Sinn Féin's policy in respect of it is. I know the policy of Deputies Coppinger, Kelly and Gannon when it comes to amendments I have put down. I do not know what Sinn Féin's policy is. I think they do not know themselves. Part of the reason there is such focus on IPAS is because it is an area where they are comfortable and do not have to make difficult decisions in respect of it. I will now deal with the substance of the amendment put down by Deputy Carthy. I want to make a couple of introductory points. Everyone in this House has an IPAS centre in their vicinity. The vast majority of them operate very peacefully, very successfully and without any trouble. It is also important to point out what IPAS centres are. They are places that accommodate human beings and it is important to emphasise that. There are obviously challenges when a local community is told that a new IPAS centre is coming into their community but that has happened in respect of all of us. It happens in my constituency, near the area where I live and there are no issues in respect of the IPAS centres in the vicinity. There have been in respect of some. Notwithstanding that, I do acknowledge that it is difficult and can be very challenging for elected representatives and local communities if they are told that there is a new international protection accommodation centre opening in their vicinity. People do not like change. They talk about change. Some people are fearful of change but, in general, my assessment is - notwithstanding that in politics we all use the word "change" - a lot of people do not like change and the unknown. That is not a legitimate reason, nor is it an acceptable reason for accommodation centres not to be put in certain areas and within certain communities. When you look at the substance of what is in the Sinn Féin amendment, it is suggesting that there be a community impact assessment before any IPAS centre is put in a community. That is all the amendment requires. It does not require that there has to be an agreement or certification by a community impact assessment stating that yes, this area is suitable for an IPAS centre. It does not require that there can be a veto in respect of it. All it says at the end of it in subsection (5) is that an IPAS centre cannot be opened until the community impact assessment has been published. Looking at the substance of it, what is the purpose of that? Why are we going to have this detailed process, and, at the end of it, all that is required on behalf of the State is that we publish the impact statement? I have no doubt that if that happened and the State went ahead with the statutory process set out here by Sinn Féin, and, at the end of the process we simply published the community impact assessment and opened the IPAS centre, there would be further objections on the basis that we were not taking on board what was stated by the community in respect of this particular IPAS centre. We all know that we cannot give a veto to individuals in a community when it comes to whether the State is going to open international protection accommodation centre there. In respect of community engagement, there is a community engagement unit within my Department, formerly in Deputy O'Gorman's Department when he was Minister. It does excellent work. It engages with public representatives. I have heard many Deputies here talk positively about the engagement they have had from community engagement. We need to recognise, however, if notification is put out that there is a plan to open an IPAS centre in the community and to ask what are your views in respect of it, we all have a fairly obvious understanding of what is going to be the predominant view of people who go out of their way to respond to it. For those reasons, I am not accepting the amendment. I also want to deal with the issue in terms of the drivers of IPAS and the "profiteering", as Deputy Carthy referred to it, in respect of IPAS. We have a legal obligation to provide accommodation to people who seek international protection. If people say that is wrong, they should say it. I do not think it is wrong. It is an obligation upon us that we should seek to fulfil. If Sinn Féin or Deputy Carthy thinks we should not provide accommodation to people seeking international protection, I am sure he would have put it down in a motion. He has not, so I assume Sinn Féin accepts that there is an obligation on the State to provide accommodation in respect of those seeking international protection. The main driver of the number of accommodation centres we have around the country - at present there are approximately 330 - is the number of people coming into the country claiming international protection. I want to reduce the spend of the State on international protection accommodation services. I have managed to reduce it from last year to this year. The budget last year was €1.2 billion; the budget this year is €1.1 billion. Since 1 May, I have managed to make savings of €80 million. The Deputy may say that is small in the context of a budget for this year of €1.1 billion, but it is heading down. The primary way I am going to be able to reduce the spend on international protection accommodation centres is by trying to speed up the process. If an applicant can be processed in six months, for first instance and appeal, all we are going to have to spend is accommodation costs for the period of six months, or maybe seven or eight months, in processing them at the end of the process. That is the mechanism to reduce the cost. I empathise with Deputy O'Gorman when he held the position that I hold now. As he said, in 2024, 18,500 people came to Ireland claiming international protection. That was an unprecedented number. We had never seen it before and it was a crisis situation. As a result of that crisis situation, Deputy O'Gorman, when he was Minister, found himself having to go around looking for accommodation centres. There were tents on the streets and pressure on him coming from the political establishment to open accommodation centres. I am now trying to ensure I am not in the business of opening more international protection accommodation centres. What I am seeking to do is to tell the officials, the first instance people and the appeal body that we need to process people much faster and get people through the system much faster. That means we can get them out of the system and work with the 33,000 spaces we have. It is also a central part of my policy, and I have put huge energy into it as well, in the same way I have put energy into the other things Deputy O'Gorman mentioned, to ensure we get the State to own more accommodation for international protection accommodation. When I started, we only had 900 places; we now have 4,000. I am committed to trying to get that up to 14,000. On the profiteering Deputy Carthy consistently talks about, as I said to him at the justice committee, in 2024, when Deputy O'Gorman was the Minister entering into contracts, he was in a situation where he desperately needed to get accommodation centres wherever they were available. Obviously, the bargaining power and bargaining strength rested with those who had the accommodation as opposed to the person seeking to rent it. That has changed. It has changed in that for people who wanted to get accommodation centres open, these centres are predominantly not being opened. I am conscious there are more amendments and people want to discuss them. I will not be supporting this amendment. We need to get to the substance of what this Bill is about in terms of asylum applications. The accommodation aspect of it is one thing in terms of reception conditions, but it is only one small part of it. It does not deserve the level of speeches from Sinn Féin, with 11 Sinn Féin Deputies speaking for two and a half hours on one amendment. Let us get on with the other stuff. We can discuss IPAS in the committee room any day with Deputy Carthy. I have been down there before and will be again but let us get on with the other amendments.

Is the amendment being pressed?

I am speaking in response to the Minister. He is the one who wanted to bring this to the floor of the Dáil. He is the one who refused the opportunity provided to him by the Oireachtas justice committee to have deliberations across every single amendment and section where these should be discussed - in the committee chamber. He was the one who wanted to allow it to take place on the floor of this Dáil, which means that every Member of this House is entitled to come in and speak to whatever amendment they wish to speak to. The Minister does not get to pick and choose and decide what amendments Opposition Members decide to speak to. They are absolutely acting within their right. The reason this amendment has garnered so much discussion is it goes to the heart of the failures of the Government, including the Minister's party, Fine Gael and the Green Party in government, over the past five years. This issue, more than anything, is the issue that has caused division, frustration and anger within communities. If the Minister or any Member does not accept that, they are absolutely deluding themselves. The Minister has been a year in office. He managed to spend €1 million last year on communications and staff, so he has had good PR. He managed to set out the narrative that he is delivering, but even though fewer international protection applicants are coming to the State, processing times have got longer. The money the Government spent in 2025 versus 2024 has increased. Those are the true facts about the record of this Government in dealing with this. Every single ounce of effort by the Department has been put into adhering to an arbitrary deadline because his predecessor signed us up lock, stock and barrel to the EU migration and asylum pact. Therein lie the failures and problems we now have. We are dealing with guillotined legislation. It is being guillotined by the Minister, yet he is decrying that people will not get to discuss in the detail that is warranted other amendments that are coming down the line. Spare me, Minister. This amendment being put forward in my name on behalf of Sinn Féin is crucially important. For all the failures, the single message the Minister could allow to come out of this Chamber is that at least the Government is listening and hearing about the experience. Sinn Féin Members, from right across the State, gave their experiences. They did set out positive experiences of integration where accommodation centres were located and had positive impacts, where the groundwork, planning and engagement were done. Well within their rights, Members set out where none of that happened. What happened was the absolute turmoil that many local communities were thrown into at no service whatsoever. Nobody will tell me that was in the best interest of any applicant for international protection who was put into an accommodation centre on that basis. The Minister can try to talk about fluctuations in demand and supply and all the rest but the truth of the matter is that for a long period, the only criterion that applied as to whether or not a building was used for international protection was the availability of that building and the willingness of the owner to use it for that purpose. Nothing else mattered, including whether that building happened to have been a resource for the community for another purpose. Homeless accommodation was closed down to be turned into international protection accommodation. Countless hotels and countless other community resources were taken away from those communities. That is not good enough. What this amendment is about is acknowledging, on behalf of the Oireachtas, that we recognise that is a bad way of going about it. If anything led to resentment or fed into the hands of the racists and those other nasty actors who were trying to create divisions within our communities, it was the approach to accommodation that fed into all those narratives. There seems to be a little confusion around what this amendment sets out. I remind Members it sets out that a community impact assessment would be carried out by a local authority or another body as the Minister sees fit. That assessment would analyse the projected capacity, carry out an assessment of local service impacts and would include community engagement plans, any mitigation measures that might be required and an analysis of the Pobal deprivation index for the area concerned. The amendment states that report would be published. The Minister is right to be cynical as to whether this Government would heed a community impact assessment but he also knows that had I put a further stipulation on the amendment, it would have been ruled out of order, just as many amendments have already been ruled out of order. Therein lies the fact. I will respond to some of the other points that have been made. As a point of principle in all my political life, I am avowedly anti-racist. I do not tolerate racism. I do not believe racism should be tolerated within any section of society. Where I see it, I will call it out. I have a track record of that in my constituency. I imagine most Sinn Féin TDs are able to point to very proud work in respect of their anti-racism activities over many decades. To suggest there is a linkage between being racist and having a policy on managing migration is a complete fabrication. Every state in the world has rules around migration. The variation is only in what those rules are, how they are implemented and whether they are actually enforced. Different governments have different levels of success in that regard. To suggest this is a left–right issue is completely false. Managing migration is the same as managing any other area of public policy. In fact, if you look around the world, you will see that some of the strictest immigration rules ever were implemented by some of the most left-leaning governments ever. One of the reasons, of course, is that a core basis on which left-wing economic policy can evolve and garner popular support is the need to build social cohesion and a sense of social solidarity. Large increases in population in a short space of time can disrupt that. Left-wing governments have recognised that throughout history. None of that is ever to suggest that it is the people themselves who are the cause of some of the challenges that arise. Nobody, certainly nobody in Sinn Féin, would contend for a second that the housing crisis in this State is as a result of somebody from outside Ireland coming here in search of a better life. The only foreigners you could possibly accuse of being responsible for the housing crisis are the vulture funds and other international financiers, but primarily the fault lies with successive Governments that decided to stop building social and public housing. There was a suggestion that Sinn Féin said having an IPAS centre in an area is a big problem and that this was the tenor of the Sinn Féin contributions last week. I absolutely dispute that. I listened to party members on this. They are people who are rooted in their communities and have been for all of their political lives, and they are avowedly anti-racist and have track records to back it up. They pointed to both positive and negative experiences and also to the need for this amendment. I have a contention that sometimes gets lost. I am really surprised there has been a suggestion by left-wing parties that we should reject an amendment that is simply calling for a community impact assessment before a development takes place. I would have thought it good politics to state locals should be involved in the conversation if anything is to be developed in their community. This is not to say any single person or group of people can stop a development taking place. The reason we have planning rules and so many of us have been so resistant to some of the Government's moves on planning is precisely because it has attempted to circumvent the need for local communities to have their say. This amendment is simply stating local communities should not be an afterthought when a development is taking place in them. It is not an adjudication as to whether a development in itself is good, bad or indifferent; however, as with every single development, there are places where any given development would be more appropriate. That should be respected. As a spokesperson on migration who has had a lot of engagement right across the country, not only with Sinn Féin supporters and members but also people who disagree with Sinn Féin’s position, who come from every possible angle you could contend with, and, crucially, local communities, I believe fervently that the vast majority of Irish people are not racist. Are there racists in our midst? Absolutely. Were there always? Yes, there were, but to contend or suggest people who have raised concerns about the locations of IPAS centres are universally racist is doing a disservice not only to them but also to us, because it is exactly that type of attitude and suggestion that feeds into the narrative of the nasty actors I was talking about. If the genuine concerns people are raising are shot down and if people are accused of being racist, fascist or something along those lines, they will shut up and we will not hear from them again. We will not hear from them on election day. Most of them will just not show up. The real winners will be the very nasty actors, who do not represent communities and a huge proportion of the Irish people at all, as far as I am concerned. What I ask people to do in respect of this amendment is vote on what is actually in front of them. On the one hand, the Minister is saying it will not really make any difference at all and, on the other, Opposition parties are saying it will be a recipe to stop every single development. It is exactly as it is written down. It is about carrying out a community impact assessment. I contend that anybody who votes against that would have serious questions to answer in their local community. How can you actually refuse to allow communities to have some real semblance of a say? Whatever about the merits or otherwise of individuals within the community engagement section of the Minister's Department, the truth of the matter is that the notion that there has been genuine community engagement on the locations of IPAS centres is laughable. It does not reflect the reality of anybody who has dealt with this issue. Members should read what the amendment states. It is eminently sensible. Members should listen to what people have said and not just interpret the amendment. They should note what we have said about the reason it is so important. If the Minister wants to make a proposal tonight that we should lift the guillotine and go down to the committee room to go through every single amendment and section at the level of detail I believe is warranted, I will happily second it for him.

I spoke last week about this legislation and how a vacuum leaves a space for bad actors, racists and misinformation to come in. Such a vacuum is caused by the lack of information going into our communities. In my area, Clondalkin, we have what is probably one of the longest running direct provision centres in the country. It has been there for over 20 years. The fact that we have a direct provision centre in the community for that long is a stain on the Government. It has failed with direct provision and is now failing people in IPAS accommodation and accommodation for Ukrainians. About ten years ago, there was a move to move people from the direct provision centre somewhere down the country, outside Dublin. The good people of Clondalkin – I was with them – rallied to keep the direct provision centre in their area. The reason is that those in the centre had benefited the community. They went to school with my kids, played football for the local GAA club and football team and became part of the community. Over the next couple of years, several other forms of accommodation were introduced, including IPAS accommodation and accommodation for Ukrainians. Centres seemed to be popping up from the Red Cow and Dulcain House to the Ibis Hotel without any communication or consultation whatsoever. It was Sinn Féin members who spoke to people at the doorsteps to inform them as to what was happening and let them know there was nothing to worry about. The Government should have been doing that but it was not. We had to fill a vacuum in our community. Having no communication leads to misinformation. I spoke last week about how misinformation can allow the ground to be planted for bad actors. I spoke on the Social Democrats motion this morning on GP services. A GP service was to come to my area – this was fantastic as it was absolutely needed – but a rumour went around that the building was going to be an IPAS centre. People came not just from Clondalkin but also from all over Dublin and threatened to burn it down. That is because there was no communication. That is why we are asking for community impact assessments and for information to be circulated. I also spoke last week about how TDs and others in my community found out through the national papers that the Citywest centre was going to become a public international protection centre. That is no way to communicate to people. During Questions on Policy or Legislation, I stood here and asked the Taoiseach for clarity on whether Citywest would become a public centre. He gave me no clarity whatsoever. At the same time as I was speaking to him, the Minister was outside on the plinth making an announcement on it. The Minister can check the timeline. The Taoiseach could not even give me an answer in here while the Minister was making an announcement outside. That is no way to communicate to people. As regards this amendment, I heard some of the criticism and I would say the Minister is sitting over there delighted to see people over here having a go at other people over here. That is what he wants because it takes the eye off him and the Government's failures on this. To criticise us for coming in here and speaking on something and taking up time when the Government has put a guillotine on this tonight is absolutely disgraceful. As Deputy Carthy said, we on the justice committee said we would give the Government as much time as it needed to discuss this in the committee room. We would have done so five days a week if necessary just to get through all of this. The Government, however, declined that offer and decided to come here and guillotine the Bill. The amendment we are talking about is about just a community impact assessment. It is not about a veto. It is about finding out if a community can take on extra vulnerable people in a situation where there are already a hell of a lot of vulnerable people. How do you look at that? You use the Pobal index of deprivation, and we spoke about that last week. If we can fill that vacuum with a community assessment and proper communications, it will stop the vacuum and will actually stop racism and misinformation getting out there.

For me, this is about listening to the people and that is about uniting rather than dividing people. We need to communicate with local communities. It is disappointing to see the Government and fellow colleagues on the left, when we are tabling sensible amendments which are about good planning, making this issue about Sinn Féin, which it should not be. I absolutely despise racism. I have been to many of these centres, sat down and drunk tea with the people there. As a councillor, I have been involved in integration days, lots of different collaborations, cultural evenings, etc. This is about planning, really. It is about a policy that is sensible and sustainable. We have roughly 320 centres, I believe, across the State. Seventy-eight of them are in Dublin. How diverse is Dalkey? How many centres are in Dalkey or in similar places? They always seem to be in working-class and rural communities that are isolated and which lack services. I would assume that any progressive-minded person, whether on the left or on the right, would want to call out greed and speculation. I am looking at €1.2 billion given to private providers last year. I am looking at people who did not have much money becoming millionaires overnight, people speculating and people running a train through planning laws. I look at Blessington and Kippure, in Wicklow. Seefin Events has been through the courts numerous times. Wicklow County Council had to order it to demolish 65 units because apparently it did not follow planning laws. It is about sensible planning. I look at Dundrum, County Tipperary, and a manor house. Often there is a speculator and international finance capital involved in this. More people were put into this centre than was the population of the village. How is that good planning? My colleague, Deputy Doherty, mentioned the Gaeltacht area of Gweedore. The whole idea was supposed to be about developing Irish speakers in the Gaeltachtaí, which are basically dying. How would Gweedore be a suitable area? How would Carna, in Connemara, be a suitable area? In my own county, Rosslare is an area which is probably the most welcoming in Ireland. You could not find a more welcoming area or village. They had two IPAS centres. There was a fantastic response to the Ukrainian war. They organised a €100,000 fundraiser in the first couple of weeks. They were due to have a nursing home in the Great Southern Hotel. What happened then? It was flipped by a big speculator - finance capital again. They were looking for planning to put 400 into the Great Southern Hotel in this tiny village. Luckily, people stopped it because it was not sensible. This is the way to oppose racism. It is about uniting people and listening to people. That has not been happening so far. I could mention numerous other examples all across Ireland, like Achill Island, etc. There are just so many of them. I think of Seefin Events, the company in Blessington that I mentioned, and Kippure. They received €5.6 million during last summer. Then we have Wicklow County Council telling them that they have to demolish because it was done in breach of planning regulations. How could that be good policy? Why would anybody on the left support that? Why would my colleagues to my right support people making €1.2 billion, finance capital groups-----

Get to the vote.

Who is supporting that?

Who is supporting it?

You are calling out our amendment. That is what we are saying.

What are you talking about?

Deputies, please.

We are saying we should not be playing to these. We should not be giving into this agenda being driven by speculators and finance capital-----

That is not in the amendment.

-----because they are the people who are driving this into these areas.

You are next, Deputy Farrelly.

At the end of the day, for me, it comes down to the best way to unite people, which is just to listen to the people, listen to local communities and try to have fair planning policies. As I said, how many centres are in Dalkey? How many centres are in Foxrock? It is about fair planning. That is the way I look at it.

My thoughts on this amendment specifically are on the record from last week and, unlike others, I will not repeat them here tonight just because I have another opportunity to take the microphone. Tonight this Government is about to make history by legislating for the ability to detain innocent children for doing nothing wrong. As it stands, at the pace we are going at this evening, irrespective of why we are here in the first place, we will not have an opportunity to debate the amendments put down to remove that provision because of the disproportionate amount of time we have spent on this amendment. I ask colleagues to think about the number of really worthwhile amendments that need a thorough conversation this evening. The time spent on this amendment has been disproportionate at this stage, with the greatest of respect to everybody here. We have gone through it all. I ask Members making a point for the second time to please think it through and let us talk about something that is really meaningful.

I was not here for the whole debate. If there was repetition, it was not on my watch, as they say. Members need to be reminded that they cannot continuously repeat points of view that have been put across. Brevity is always good in a debate, but the rules on Committee Stage allow for exchange back and forth. There is nothing to prevent that and there are no time slots on Committee Stage. That is why Committee Stage usually happens in the committee rooms. Anyway, how stands amendment No. 15?

Pressed.

I move amendment No. 16: In page 26, after line 30, to insert the following: “Transparency of accommodation contracts 14.(1) The Minister shall publish all contracts, subcontracts, financial schedules, performance reports, and compliance assessments relating to accommodation or services provided to international protection applicants. (2) Publication shall occur no later than 30 days after the signing of the relevant document. (3) Information may be withheld only where strictly necessary to protect commercially sensitive material, as defined by regulation, and such withholding must be justified in writing. (4) All documents published under this section shall be made available on a publicly accessible website maintained by the Minister.”. This amendment is an attempt to finally bring some level of transparency to IPAS contracts. It is fairly simple and states that the Minister shall publish all contracts, subcontracts, financial schedules, performance reports and compliance assessments relating to accommodation or services provided to international protection applicants. It also states that publication should take place no later than 30 days after the signing of any relevant document and that information may be withheld only where strictly necessary to protect commercially sensitive material as defined by regulation and that such withholding must be justified in writing. The Minister may not like this, but any discussion of Ireland's international protection system is pointless unless we have a conversation about the massive profiteering that has evolved from the provision of IPAS accommodation. I do not know why or how any such statement should or could be controversial. The Minister has essentially told the House that the owners of properties essentially held all the cards in terms of the contract negotiations that took place. When discussing the previous amendment, we talked about a lot of the concerns, frustration and anger within many communities. Nothing has intensified that anger more than the reality that while communities have been completely cut out of the process with no engagement whatsoever - and the Minister's position on the previous amendment is that this will basically continue - the profits some companies have made have been obscene. What is worse is the fact that the conditions in which many international protection applicants have been living are unacceptable. A small number of private operators have made millions off the back of the Government's dysfunctional approach. There has been no transparency regarding what qualifies certain individuals to get contracts like this. Across the country, we have seen people who are predominantly failed businessmen all of sudden become millionaires because they hit the jackpot and managed to get a couple of accommodation contracts. Every other business operation these people touched turned to dust, but we entrusted them with the care of human beings with no analysis of whether they were qualified or what made them qualified. We have seen countless examples where contracts have been entered into in respect of properties, people have been residing in those properties for years in some cases and then it turns out there is no fire certificate never mind any other building regulations being complied with. One scenario involved an IPAS centre that had been operating for a couple of years but that did not even have running water. It had to bring in water in tanks on a daily basis. It is not just Sinn Féin that is saying this. In his annual report last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General was as scathing as I have ever seen him, and I am a former member of the Committee of Public Accounts. His report confirmed people's worst fears about the lack of due diligence and overcharging. The Comptroller and Auditor General has found an absolute disregard for the use of public money, and there is no sense that anybody is being held accountable for it. The Minister has repeated a couple of times during this debate that he has spoken to Deputies about IPAS contracts on a number of occasions. However, he has not answered any questions about any specific contracts because it is all being done behind a veil of secrecy. One company that had been operating as a coffee shop made profits of €2,992 one year. That was the annual profit for the whole company. It segued into international protection accommodation and within a year its two directors were paying themselves €4.6 million in wages. Nobody seemed to be bothered about it. One beneficiary of a lucrative IPAS contract was subsequently named in CAB documents as being involved in gangland crime. We found out that the quality of the accommodation being provided was wholly unsuitable. However, when we put questions about it to the Minister, he told us that it was all sorted and would not happen today, but we have no way of knowing any of that. That is what this amendment is about because ultimately this is public money. It is being spent on the mechanism that this Government has decided is going to be used to meet its obligations under international law to provide accommodation for people seeking international protection. Some €1.2 billion was spent last year - over €3.2 million every day - and there is no transparency whatsoever. Sinn Féin is calling for every IPAS contract to be reviewed. I refer to the cases I mentioned that the C and AG highlighted. His office analysed just a small sample size of IPAS contracts and found huge issues in terms of due diligence and overcharging. The Government was overcharged by people who were in receipt of these contracts. It is bizarre that the C and AG found such blatant wastage of public money in a small sample, but nothing has been done. There has not been a comprehensive analysis of every contract, so we can only assume that if we extrapolate that across the sector, there is a whole range of other issues. The cases that I mentioned have caused uproar in terms of the expenditure of public money on contracts with people who were not suitable as they had no track record or had dubious backgrounds. We did not find any of this out because of the Minister's Department or because he divulged it. We found that out because of journalists doing their job and informing the public. The lack of transparency has allowed what I have described again and again as massive profiteering. The Minister told this House that we were in a very difficult situation and if someone came forward with an offer of property, they held all the cards, but it is not too bad now because the numbers have reduced. He is essentially telling us is that if the numbers increase again substantially, we are going to be back to square one and we will see the exact same thing happen again. I want to remind Members of some of the weaknesses the C and AG found. They included overpayments, incorrect VAT charges, poor invoice verification, inadequate due diligence on providers and weak monitoring of accommodation standards. That report concluded that financial controls were insufficient and the system allowed significant compliance failures and potential profiteering. This amendment might not be able to address every inadequacy in every contract, but at least we will be able to say to the people that there will be a little bit of transparency and then they can adjudicate the success, or otherwise, of the Minister of the day. Again, I look forward to seeing how the Minister argues against supporting this amendment. There is nothing in the amendment that anybody should be afraid of. The notion of commercial sensitivity is a veil behind which the Government hides its huge level of squandering of public money. We see this across public services. There is nobody seeking accommodation for international protection other than the Department of justice. It is not as if it is in competition with somebody else. The only reason the Minister is still hiding a lot of the detail is that there are some companies which are absolutely milking it in terms of the price they are getting paid per bed per day and the stipulations they have to adhere to regarding the quality of the accommodation or whether they are required to have the accommodation completely filled on an ongoing basis. I hope to have the support of the Minister and the House for the amendment.

I am not opposed to this amendment at all. My point is probably more relevant to the next amendment, but heaven knows if we will ever get there. Of course, we should have transparency in relation to contracts, but that should be the lowest bar. Our position is that we should be moving towards State-owned reception centres. I fear that supporting an amendment such as this enshrines privatisation into the system, which is something I absolutely could not support.

We have to have transparency. There is the example of the two directors of a cafe which had a profit of €2,992. Three years later, they paid themselves €4.6 million. There is something very strange there. Looking at my area of County Wicklow, €1.3 million was spent on security for the vacant site of a failed IPAS centre. It is just a site sitting there. Deputy John Brady brought it into the public domain at a recent meeting of the public accounts committee. The Comptroller and Auditor General's report has raised serious concerns about all of these things. There is very poor compliance and safety. For example, a demolition order was granted for 65 units that were built illegally by Seefin Events in Blessington, according to what I have read. There is huge profiteering and overcharging. We had an instance of a VAT overcharge of €7.4 million by one company to the State and the taxpayer. There is a complete lack of due diligence. No one in their right mind can oppose transparency in these contracts. There has to be transparency.

I have no issue with the amendment per se but, as Deputy Gannon said, I am concerned that we are going down the road of enshrining the use of private accommodation. We really need to get to a point where this is all publicly owned. We said this last week. All of the Opposition have argued that we should have the infrastructure for the provision of accommodation. If we go down the road of putting in amendments like this, it could be a get-out clause for the Government to not provide such infrastructure over a period of time. I know it is impossible to have it done to a certain point today, this week or this year because in the emergency scenario they had to go down certain roads. I have serious concerns about how these contracts were given. I have serious concerns about how the Department handled this issue. I know there have been changes in the Department. This was with the Department of children and then it came across to the Department of justice but the same sections came with it when it came into justice. I see no consistency in relation to how contracts were awarded. There were constant personnel changes in the Department. You could not talk to anybody. They never gave contact details on their emails and eventually they did not even give names as regards who you could deal with to find out what was going on. Some of the decision-making in relation to contracts was downright stupid. Giving a contract to the last hotel in Roscrea was absolutely stupid. Another €150,000 was then spent pretending that a second hotel that had been closed for a decade could be opened. This was a consequence of giving the contract to the owners of the Racket Hall Hotel in the first place. It was stupid. I am sorry. There are massive learnings in relation to this. I am concerned about enshrining this amendment in legislation because we are going to be dealing with this issue on a huge scale for many, many years. We need to have the proper State infrastructure in place. That should be our priority and that is where we should be going in relation to the provision of accommodation for those seeking asylum.

Previously and over the course of a number of hours last week, we spoke a lot about the asylum application process itself and the need for transparency in that area. We spent a lot of time today and last week as well on the previous amendment that was taken in relation to the community impact assessments, which the Minister did not accept. Again, that was about transparency and making sure communities were at least consulted and had a voice in relation to what was happening in their communities. We have a similar amendment here in regard to contracts, subcontracts, financial schedules and so on. At the heart of this is a small number of people who have become very wealthy on the back of providing IPAS accommodation. I agree with Deputy Kelly. It is not that we want more private accommodation; it is happening. I certainly support more public provision. That is where we should be and it was something the Government committed to before. The Minister has talked about this in the past himself when he said some progress is being made but I can tell him that people see it themselves. They know what is happening in their own communities, where they see people who are making huge amounts of money out of this. It is accommodation that, in some cases, is hotels in areas where we know that is not the best way to provide IPAS accommodation. In other areas, it is accommodation that is not really fit for purpose but somebody saw an opportunity to make money. There is anger about the level of profiteering and the scale of profits being made by these individuals. Notwithstanding all that and whatever views we might have of using such accommodation - and I agree with previous speakers that public provision is always best, rather than lining the pockets of these wealthy people - unfortunately it is happening. Unfortunately, it is a feature of this Government providing IPAS accommodation and there is no transparency. What an Teachta Carthy is trying to do through this amendment is to bring some level of transparency whereby we and the public are aware of exactly what is being paid. As the amendment states, "The Minister shall publish all contracts". Is there a reason that cannot be done? On subcontracts, is there a reason that cannot be done? On financial schedules, is there a reason that cannot be done, or in regard to performance reports and compliance assessments relating to accommodation, which would surely benefit everybody? In life and politics, we know that transparency protects everybody and a lack of transparency is our enemy. We have seen that on this and other issues. If the Government is not transparent in what it is doing, or is not seen to be transparent, that causes more difficulties and challenges for the political system and more damage within communities. For that reason, I ask the Minister to support the amendment.

I will start by saying that, contrary to what Deputy Cullinane said about there being no transparency in the area of international protection accommodation services, there is in fact a very high degree of transparency. My Department publishes figures detailing the numbers of residents and centres, with a breakdown of numbers of emergency accommodation centres, on a weekly basis. There is full transparency from my Department in regard to providers who receive payments, with details of all payments over €20,000 and the recipients published quarterly online at gov.ie. That is why Members of the House have such detailed information on the amount of money being made by companies that are providing accommodation to the State. There is also transparency in respect of inspection reports. Inspection reports from all IPAS accommodation centres are published either on the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, website or on gov.ie. The only time there is a restriction on publication is when that is based either on residents' security - I am sure people here will appreciate residents' safety or privacy - or on commercially sensitive information, the publication of which would damage the State's ability to achieve good value for money. It is obviously a competitive market and the amount of money the State is paying on a per person, per night basis is information that should not be given out because it will provide a commercial advantage to other persons seeking to secure contracts. In regard to the issue raised by colleagues, I agree that we want to get out of private accommodation but when we have over 30,000 people who need accommodation, the State does not have the accommodation to provide that to them. Because of that, the State obviously has to contract with private contractors-----

Which is why there should be transparency.

-----in order to get accommodation for individuals who are applicants. I am pleased to say that the State has been increasing the amount of accommodation that is State-owned. When I took over responsibility here on 1 May 2025, we only had 900 spaces owned by the State. We now have 4,000. I want to get to a situation where we have 14,000. A large part of that is going to be achieved through the State buying units, which we can then use for the State for the purpose of accommodation. If the State is required because of the high numbers to contract with private contractors to provide accommodation to applicants, of course it is the case that we are going to have to buy it. Nobody is going to set up accommodation or fit out units and then just hand it over to the State. We have to buy it and I am pleased to say that significant savings have been made in the past number of months. Since 1 May, we have saved €80 million on contracts that have been renegotiated. That is a real saving and it is part of the reason the budget for IPAS is going down this year. The amendment is not necessary. There is a lot of transparency in respect of IPAS already. People can go online and get information on who is getting the money for IPAS, provided they are receiving over €20,000.

I have to say, the Minister talks a really good game.

I thank the Deputy.

The problem is that the facts do not back up what he is saying. He has spoken a number of times tonight about how he has increased State-provided accommodation. That was through the purchase of one centre. Let us be absolutely clear about it. It did not actually increase the capacity at all because it was a centre already in use at Citywest. I would argue that the way in which that purchase was handled vis-à-vis the local community and indeed the residents leaves a lot to be desired in respect of the potential success for future purchases. If anyone was listening to the Minister, you would actually think, "Jesus, that is a lot of information". You get to know exactly how much someone is getting in contracts if it is over €20,000 but you do not actually get to know how much somebody is getting. You get to know what a company is getting. You do not necessarily know who the owner of that company is.

They are contracting with companies.

In fact, I asked the Minister in committee if he would ensure that the beneficial owners of a company in receipt of potentially millions of euro in State money would be divulged to the public. He said that is not the way this Government does business.

I did not say that.

That is what he said. Words to that effect. The Minister does not publish the beneficial owners of companies. He does not let us know whether there is a number of companies who are perhaps getting less than €20,000 per annum that could be owned by the same people. Crucially, what the Minister does not divulge is that while he tells us how much the company is getting paid, he does not tell us what we are actually getting in return and how many people individual companies are providing accommodation for and where they are providing it. He does not tell us if complaints have been made against any accommodation by residents or anybody else. He gives us the macro figures but he does not actually give us the detail. The Minister says it is because of his information that we have all the detail we have here. I am after saying that we got detail from the Comptroller and Auditor General and from journalists. None of the really obscene scandals we have seen in respect of IPAS accommodation contracts were actually divulged by the Minister's contract. The Minister tells us that in the second half of this year alone, through negotiations, he saved €80 million, and he said that without blushing. He should be embarrassed for his predecessor or whoever negotiated the original contracts. What he is saying is that for those contracts alone, we overpaid the equivalent of €80 million for a six-month period. How long were those contracts in place? Did we actually overpay over the past three or four years for those contracts? Will the Minister divulge that? I think that is in the public interest. It is €1.2 billion spent last year and over €3.2 million every single day, predominantly on private contracts. To answer Deputies Gannon and Kelly, I absolutely believe we should not only move towards State-provided accommodation but we should have been there a lot sooner than now. None of that negates anything I said earlier about community engagement for those places, by the way. I am on the same page. However, even the Minister, in the most optimistic scenario, outlines the current proposal as a wish to get to 14,000 in State-provided accommodation. Even with those figures, there is a very high chance there will be some need for private contracts, given the current trajectory. Let us not try to find excuses not to support what are very important and clearly set out amendments. The amendment proposes, for the first time, allowing the Irish people to know where their tax money is being spent, who is benefiting and what the State and international protection applicants are getting in return. The Minister just says he does not see the reason for it, but he has not actually given an argument against this amendment. Therefore, I hope that, even at this stage, there might be a change of heart to let people know that we are going to provide a bit of transparency in this regard. It is the very least that people should expect when we are spending so much money, and when the Minister is overseeing such a dysfunctional system. At the very minimum, if we are spending €1.2 billion, people should have a right to know exactly how that is being spent and who is benefiting.

It has been said multiple times before, but I must refer to the anger out there about those who have coined it in the IPAS disaster that this State has stood over. I agree with Deputy Carthy. We would all have preferred to see what would have been a lot cheaper from the point of view of the State’s coffers, that is, the public provision of necessary accommodation. I accept there were issues of State failure with regard to processing times, which we have constantly brought up in the House. However, the fact is that people saw a chance to make money, and they went out and did it. I will admit that some of them may have run better outfits than others. Some were absolute chancers, however, providing sub-par property at high-bar prices, and the State paid. What we are talking about here is transparency in order that we would see who is making the money and how much money they are making. It would have made a lot more sense for the State to go in the direction suggested by Catherine Day, namely, State provision. Again, as Deputy Carthy said, it is also about ensuring that when that happens, no more than when any of this happens, there should be proper, real engagement with the community. There has been an abject failure in that regard. When talking about contracts, we could talk about the D Hotel and the fact that nobody did any element of due diligence on that. Drogheda lost the D Hotel, where many weddings and functions took place. It was a necessity from the point of view of the tourism business, but it was taken away. There was an awful lot of talk with the Government, over and back, about how we would be able to use it for dual purposes, but that never came to anything. It was just another load of waffle, conversation and time wasted. Then we discovered that the fire certification was only for 240 beds, while the State had entered into a contract for 500. That just sums up the farce that IPAS was. We are all in agreement that what we need is public provision. It will take a considerable amount of time to get there, particularly because we started on the journey too late, but beyond that, there needs to be transparency. I ask that due diligence is done. It is proposals like this amendment that we need to see in operation. We then need to ensure that it is not the case of many a fly-by-night operator who thought they could buy a hotel without even really needing to know how to run a hotel. In the case of the D Hotel, they would only need to half-run it, and they could make an absolute fortune. People literally set up tiny businesses that became huge businesses that were all about delivering IPAS accommodation. That is a failure of the State, and the cost has been astronomical. I ask for sense and for the House to support Deputy Carthy's amendment.

I think the Minister is confusing providing information with transparency. He said earlier that there is a high level of transparency. It depends on what information he is providing. If the information is vague and does not provide what should be provided, I am afraid the transparency is not there. In relation to the profiteering that we certainly see in this area, I will get to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report shortly, given that it was very clear about what it uncovered. There are also issues in relation to the suitability of some of the companies or individuals providing this accommodation. Do they have experience in this area? Are they the best people? Are the companies the best companies to provide the service? I remember that some 15 years ago, I was invited to a direct provision centre in Waterford city. A private company runs the service. There were about 80 families living in the accommodation at the time, and they invited me out because they had issues they wanted to talk about with their local public representative. When I got there, the manager of the centre would not allow me in. She said that I would have to make an appointment and come back again. I said that was fair enough and asked to make an appointment, but she said that, no, I could not meet them there. I was eventually barred from that centre. I certainly raised that with the Minister for Justice at the time. What really struck me was the “out of sight, out of mind” approach that was in place. There are genuine issues of transparency with regard to companies providing a service where over €1 billion is being spent and tens of millions are being made. We want to make sure that the highest levels of transparency apply. That brings me to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report. If all of those checks and balances that the Minister says are in place were in place, why is it that the Comptroller and Auditor General, in his report, found major weaknesses in IPAS contracting? Why is it that he found overpayments, incorrect VAT charges, poor invoice verification, inadequate due diligence on providers and weak monitoring of accommodation standards? The report concluded that financial controls were insufficient and that the system allowed significant failures and potential profiteering. Those are not my words or Deputy Carthy’s words. They are the words of the Comptroller and Auditor General, who looked into this area and found there were problems left, right and centre. If there were problems left, right and centre that the Comptroller and Auditor General found, was he wrong? Is the Minister saying he was wrong? Deputy Carthy rightly called the Minister out when he said he saved tens of millions of euro. That only adds to what we are saying. He is making the argument for us that what we are calling for is what is needed. In the conclusion to the Minister's earlier comments, he said that this amendment is not necessary. That is what troubles me. I think the Minister believes what is there at the moment is robust, and he believes what is there at the moment is the level of transparency that I, the Members of this House and communities should have. I do not buy into that, and I do not believe it. I believe in much higher levels of transparency. I will finish where I started. There is a big difference between providing limited information, as the Minister does, and transparency. I think communities out there see it. They are calling the Minister out on it. They are calling the Government out. They are hoping that the Minister will make the changes that are necessary but, given his response to the previous comments made by Deputy Carthy, I and others, I think they will be waiting a while for that to come.

I move amendment No. 17: In page 26, after line 30, to insert the following: “Matters concerning minors 14. The best interests of the child shall be primary consideration in the application of this Act, and the Minister shall have due regard to this principle in respect of all matters concerning minors.”.

Amendment No. 18 is ruled out of order.

Why has it been ruled out of order?

It is a potential charge on revenue.

That is stretching it.

I move amendment No. 19: In page 26, after line 30, to insert the following: “Cap on daily expenditure for international protection accommodation 14. (1) The Minister shall, by regulations made under this Act, prescribe a maximum amount that may be paid per person per day by the State in respect of accommodation provided to applicants for international protection. (2) Regulations made under subsection (1) shall specify— (a) the monetary cap applicable to all forms of accommodation procured or funded by the Minister for the purposes of this Act, (b) the methodology used in determining the cap, including consideration of value for money, regional cost variations, and the avoidance of excessive reliance on emergency or ad hoc accommodation arrangements, and (c) the date on which the cap shall come into operation. (3) The Minister shall review the cap prescribed under subsection (1) at least once in every 12 month period and may amend the cap by regulation following such review. (4) Regulations under this section shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after they are made.”. I am surprised in respect of amendment No. 18. It would have been very complementary to this amendment. It called on the Minister to ensure that any company seeking to enter into a contract with the State for the provision of IPAS accommodation or services would be subject to mandatory due diligence and vetting procedures prior to the wording of the contract. Such measures would have included the verification of the identity of the directors, partners or the people exercising control, full appraisal of the beneficial ownership and confirmation of things like tax compliance, checks for prior regulatory sanctions and any other checks that the Minister would consider to be necessary. I do not know if the Minister is going to give any clarification at all in respect of these conversations as to any additional measures he is bringing forward that will ensure that we have proper oversight and public oversight in respect of these contracts. Amendment No. 19 provides for a cap on the daily expenditure for international protection accommodation. The Minister's responses to the previous amendment will crystalise for all Members the need for this. This is not an endorsement of the private provision of IPAS accommodation. It is an acknowledgement and a recognition of the reality. It is bizarre that Members of the Opposition voted against the previous amendment, which called for transparency on contracts. There was a very far-reaching suggestion that by suggesting having transparency in respect of private contracts in some way means that it is an endorsement of private contracts. The amendment sets out that there will be a maximum payment rate per bed per day. That is again to ensure that there are proper checks and balances and oversight. I do not know if the Minister will tell us tonight, but we have not been told up until this point, what the maximum payment paid per bed per night in any accommodation centre is. He certainly will not tell us where that is being paid, which is the crux of the problem we discussed earlier. When we are talking about expenditure of €1.2 billion in a year, there is no capital expenditure in that. That is money that is spent. That in itself was an increase of almost €200 million on the year before. For all the rhetoric of the Minister of improvements, the only thing the Minister and Department can be adjudicated on is one financial year versus the next financial year. There was an increase of €195 million between 2024 and 2025. That represents expenditure of €3.28 million per day. Those are astronomical and amazing figures when we think about it. As a result of the information that we gleamed from the Department, we know that the average rate per bed per day rose by 68%, or almost 740%, between 2022 and 2024. That is nothing to do with the numbers of people coming. Costs are going to increase when we are accommodating more people. That is a given. That is profiteering. I will use term again unapologetically when we have a situation where there is a 70% increase, not in the overall costs but in the cost per bed per day. As the Minister essentially conceded, people saw an opportunity and took full advantage. That money did not result in a better service or better accommodation for the people who are housed there. It certainly did not result in better value for the taxpayer. That money has gone straight into the pockets of those private providers. We can only assume and deduce quite reasonably that it was a 70% increase on profits because the cost base between 2022 and 2024 did not increase by 70%. It did for the taxpayer, not the actual provider. There was a lot of discussion in respect of the pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme. The pre-legislative scrutiny report highlighted serious concerns about the escalating and unsustainable cost of IPAS accommodation. It noted that the Bill contains no mechanism whatsoever to cap costs, no strategy to control provider pricing and no reforms to prevent the State from becoming increasingly dependent on expensive private contracts. That was at the pre-legislative scrutiny stage. True to form, Ministers just ignored that aspect of the report from the committee just as they ignored everything else. The only thing that has decided the Government's approach to all of this is an absolute pigheadedness to adhere to the deadline that been set in place by the EU migration and asylum pact. To hell with democratic oversight, to hell with the position of the justice committee that undertook comprehensive pre-legislative scrutiny and to hell with all of those who gave up their time and prepared substantive submissions and came before the committee to give their oral submissions and take questions from the members of the committee who then went to the point of compiling the pre-legislative scrutiny report. This amendment is requiring the Minister to set a daily maximum rate. I am not even trying to tell Minister what it should be. We have set out that the maximum daily rate should be €71, which is the average rate. A total of €71 per bed per night is a good return for anybody within that business if that is what they are doing. It would set out parameters to which the Department would adhere. It would define how the cap should be calculated. It mandates annual reviews and ensures all regulations - this is crucially important for accountability and a bit of democratic oversight - are formally laid before the Oireachtas. What is the alternative? The Minister has basically told us that if it comes to a point where the system is under pressure again, we will be back to the same situation. Who knows what could happen internationally that would result in the number of people seeking international protection growing very quickly in a very short space of time, putting pressure on services? The providers will once again hold all of the cards in the negotiations and, because the Government has rejected any semblance of oversight or transparency, the Department will be doing side deals again. A couple of years later, we will find out through another report of the Comptroller and Auditor General that somebody else who owned a coffee shop and was barely breaking even has become a multimillionaire on the back of a crisis situation and the inability of the Government to manage public finances effectively. I have moved the amendment. I hope that, in this instance, the Government will say that this is as reasonable as an Opposition amendment gets, that it is about having a little bit of financial and democratic oversight and that it therefore makes absolute sense to incorporate it into the Bill.

I did not know I would be the next speaker. I thought there were others. Sinn Féin is advocating introducing a limit per day per asylum seeker. Does Deputy Carthy have any idea how much that would be? It could not be changed for 12 months. That is my reading of the amendment. There is profiteering in a lot of fields. Should we introduce the same amendment in terms of homeless accommodation for Irish citizens because there is profiteering in that area as well? I am a socialist. I call out profiteering all the time. I advocate for multinational corporations paying more in corporation tax than they are paying. No other party in the Dáil agrees with that but profiteering has suddenly been of central concern for the last several hours, although just on the issue of international protection. Does Deputy Carthy not see a problem with that? There are quite a lot of things that people would like to get to, such as family reunification, warrants and powers. There is a whole load of stuff here. Sinn Féin is the biggest Opposition party. It has all the TDs. If it wants to do it this way, it can. However, I ask the Sinn Féin Members to consider that there is loads of other stuff here that really deserves to be aired in the next hour and three quarters but we are not going to reach it because it seems Sinn Féin wants to have a bunch of TDs who can tell people they raised the issues of IPAS profiteering and transparency and all of these things. It is a little bit disingenuous, especially if the Deputies are going to call themselves anti-racists. There is very racist stuff coming up here that we would like to reach but all of the discussion in the last few hours has been about this issue. I cannot agree to a limit per person per day. You could very easily end up impoverishing people and leaving them living on subsistence payments. It is a very dangerous power to give to the Government.

I will briefly reinforce Deputy Carthy's points. Two years ago, the Secretary General of the Department of integration gave out the figures for payments per night. He highlighted how the State was paying the private accommodation providers over twice the amount that was being paid to house asylum seekers in State-owned accommodation. That just reinforces the contradictions within this system yet again.

We voted against the last amendment because we feared it would enshrine privatisation in the system. We make no apologies for that. We are dealing with a Bill that enshrines the detention of children in the system. When we talk about introducing a per person cap, we present the image that asylum seekers are somehow being kept in the lap of luxury. There is rightfully a lot of talk about profiteering. From the foundation of the State, it has always monetised other people's poverty and oppression. However, we are not talking about the fact that thousands of men are given sleeping bags and sent to the canal. That is one of my problems with the conversation that is going on at the moment. We are reiterating the failure of a badly designed State system. I do not want to enshrine the means by which that can continue. I fundamentally believe in State reception centres. Best practice, as laid out in the Catherine Day report, was to have seven. That was updated to nine. At the moment, we have one, and that one was dubiously purchased. While we are so far away from that, I do not want to enshrine the means by which we can keep privatising this system and seeing it as the norm and something to be managed rather than something we are seeking to eradicate, as we should. I have reservations about placing a cap on the amount of money paid per individual. I do not know exactly what that cap would be. It would be useful to have a sense of that. I understand Sinn Féin had previously said €71 but that is not contained in the amendment in front of me. I have reservations. I am interested in hearing the Minister of State's response before we decide how to vote.

We are obviously not accepting this amendment. I do not know if Sinn Féin fell asleep in 2024 but its members have gone assiduously out of their way - I know they would not do so deliberately - not to mention the new rate card introduced in May 2025 or acknowledge that this rate card is delivering €83 million in savings to the State. It has been applied across 147 centres and the process of putting in place these contracts has been overhauled. The State's objective is always to ensure we have a robust system that delivers value for money when we are signing these new contracts, ensures centres are inspected and properly regulated, and has transparency built in with payments over €20,000 fully recorded. The value of a rate card system is that it allows the best deal to be struck. That system is now working well and it will continue to work well.

First of all, in respect of the debate-----

The Deputy mentioned 2023 to 2024 three times. He never said anything about 2025.

I will come to that. The Minister of State should not worry. In respect of the debate, the Government decided the format of this debate. Because it tied us into the EU migration and asylum pact, in respect of which there was a deadline, everything else in terms of the consideration of this Bill has been put to one side. We are now in a situation where this debate is being rushed, guillotined and taken on the floor of the Dáil. The rules within that system are being adhered to. We have all been in situations when dealing with guillotined Bills where there have been amendments of ours or parts of the Bill we would like to discuss but we just do not get to that point. Those people who happen to have amendments they want to speak to earlier on cannot be blamed for that. Blame the Government. It is frankly bizarre that Deputies Jim O'Callaghan and Ruth Coppinger are making the exact same argument and saying that we should not talk about an amendment on transparency or community consultation because there are other things further down the amendment list that people would like to speak to. There are lots of issues in this Bill that I would like to spend time deliberating on. I submitted 50 amendments to this Bill across a whole range of policy areas. I would like to deliberate on each of them. In respect of this amendment, to be very clear, the contracts are set out on a per person per day basis. That is how the contracts are set out. The language just reflects that. The Minister of State can confirm that the contracts are usually set out in three-year terms. What this amendment is saying is that there would be a maximum amount that the Department would agree to for contracts in a given year and that new contracts would be reviewed annually. At the moment, the system is that a contract is signed for three years, and that is the contract in place. That is why we still have God knows how many situations whereby, as the Minister has acknowledged, there is overspending. It was mentioned that this could impoverish someone, but the only person it could impoverish it would do so by making sure that the people who pay themselves €4.6 million in profits might only be able to pay themselves €3 million or €2 million. They certainly would not be in impoverished by all of that. I invite the Minister of State to come back in, because he mentioned the rate card for 2024. This is a big Government scheme. Will he inform the House what the rates in the rate card are? He will not, because there is damn all transparency in this. He is telling everybody that there is a rate card and we are making great savings, but he will not actually tell people what the rate card says. Seriously. That is his argument for rejecting this amendment, namely, that there is a rate card that is hidden in a filing cabinet somewhere in the Department and that every operator of an IPAS centre knows what it is. The Minister of State knows what it is, but the people who are actually ponying up - the taxpayers – do not know what it is. There is no transparency in respect of this. This is such a simple amendment to ensure that a Minister would set a maximum rate and let the people who are footing the bill know what that maximum rate is. It is so simple that I find it hard to believe that we even have to have a discussion on this or the fact that it is not in place already. The rate card is a secret document. The Minister of State cannot tell us whether the rate card has been breached in the event of additional pressures. Has anyone gone above the rate card? We do not know. The Minister of State will not tell us. What is the difference between the highest and the lowest rate paid according to the rate card? The Minister of State will not tell us why there is a difference between the highest and the lowest rates on the rate card. He should not talk about the rate card as if Sinn Féin has conveniently forgotten that it exists. Sinn Féin has never been told what the rate card comprises. More importantly, the people who pay have never been told either. This is about transparency and recognising what emerged from an absolutely damning report by the Comptroller and Auditor General. I find the Minister of State's arrogance bizarre. There is a sense of the Government is spending the money, never mind how it is actually spent, we would not understand, the little people would not understand how the Government is spending the money, and it is doing all of these great things. The only independent appraisal of Government expenditure in this area was carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General, an office for which most people would have respect. We could not accuse the Comptroller and Auditor General's office of hyperbole. If it says something, there is an issue. It has set out in very stark terms in a sample look at the contracts that there were huge issues - overspends and tax returns that were wrong, including VAT returns. I could go through the list again. We have that evidence. We have no evidence to suggest that all of those issues have been sorted out. The Minister was asked multiple times by Sinn Féin to carry out a review of every single IPAS contract. I do not see any reason for the Minister not to do that. Tonight, when we bring forward an amendment that simply says that there will be a maximum payment available under the terms of these contracts and that the Minister will tell people what that is, I would have thought that would be something that would be welcome because it would bring clarity and a little bit of transparency across the board. Deputies Gannon and Coppinger said they did not know what the rate was. I said what Sinn Féin previously set the rate at, but what we have said is that, under this Bill, the Minister would prescribe a maximum amount in regulations and that those regulations would be brought back to this House so that, for the first time ever, we would have a little bit of democratic oversight of how public money is being spent in this area. Is the Minister of State going to give us the details on the record?

The purpose of having a rate card and delivering those savings, which are in the millions of euro, while having a transparent process under which payments of over €20,000 are recorded is to have a system where people can see what has been paid and we have an ability to negotiate and deliver the best value for money for the taxpayer. When every contract comes up, and there are 147 of them so far since the summer of last year, it goes through a process that appraises it and looks to deliver the best value for money and, obviously, all the quality assurance standards we want. That is the best way of doing it. I do not agree with the Deputy's analysis of how it should be done, so I cannot accept the amendment.

Is the Minister of State going to answer the question in respect of the rate cards?

I have given my answer to the Deputy.

No, the Minister of State has not. He did not answer a single one of the questions I put to him there. The question is about what is in the rate card and what the maximum payment within it is. I assume if it is a rate card that there is a maximum and a minimum. What is the maximum the Government is willing to pay? On what basis does it reach that decision? Could the Minister of State please not give us this façade that there is transparency? Transparency is not just knowing how much somebody receives. It is knowing what they are delivering in return. It is important that we know if somebody is in receipt of a public contract worth millions of euro so that we know precisely what they are providing. How many people are they accommodating? Have the premises they provide been inspected? If so, what were the results of that inspection? Has the building a fire certificate? All of this stuff is just basic transparency and accountability and the Minister of State is avoiding it at all costs. I will ask him again to divulge the details of the rate card. If he will not, then he cannot rely on it for an argument against an amendment that is about bringing forward transparency and accountability.

I will rely on a rate card that is delivering millions in savings to us in this area. It is delivering value for money, which we wanted to see, and I believe it is working for us. I will stand over the fact that there is transparency in the payments that are being made. We will not agree, I am sure, but that is the case.

To clarify, obviously, I would love us to continue talking on this Bill for as long as possible. My comment was in the context that we had a guillotined Bill. I have spoken in many debates before where we judiciously picked and chose what we were going to try to be allowed to reach in the context of a guillotined Bill. It was just a bit of a silly comment. We have an hour and a half left and I just made the point that there were other things. I do not know if it is a good idea to be voting for maximum payments for homeless accommodation or for asylum or IPAS accommodation. I do not think that Sinn Féin would introduce this for homeless accommodation, for example, and there is profiteering in that as well. I just think it is quite a dangerous one and we should be moving to a nationalised sector and the State providing this in any case.

I am just going to respond to that very briefly. We can only deal with what is in front of us. We are dealing with the International Protection Bill. We are bringing forward an amendment that is aimed at tackling something that has been clearly identified by the Comptroller and Auditor General, and by several journalists who have tried to ascertain some of the scandals. There are many scandals within IPAS contracts in terms of the services being provided to residents, the value for money provided to the State and the profiteering that has been at the heart of that. We have to bring forward measures to deal with that, and that is what Sinn Féin has done. The amendments we have brought forward are very fair and transparent. I do not think anybody who values democratic oversight and, in particular, parliamentary oversight would have any issue with this amendment.

I move amendment No. 20: In page 28, between lines 32 and 33, to insert the following: “(14) The best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration in the carrying out of procedures in respect of a minor under this Part, in accordance with Article 14(1) of the Eurodac Regulation.”.

May I speak to the section?

You may, Deputy.

Section 15 concerns Eurodac. It is the first section to deal with the Child and Family Agency, Tusla. The Minister of State will know that we have a number of amendments in respect of the ability of Tusla to do the job it is asked to do. Last week or the week before, Judge Conor Fottrell of the Dublin District Court hit out at what he called profiteering by private operators that are providing unregulated placements for the most vulnerable children, describing it as "wrong and shameful". At the time, he was dealing with a 13-year-old boy who remains missing from an unregulated placement. This legislation is putting additional responsibilities onto Tusla. Last week, I asked the Minister of State, on a number of occasions, what additional resources Tusla would be provided with. What additional staff will be put in place? How can we have any confidence whatsoever in respect of this legislation that Tusla, a body that many people argue is unfit to do the roles already assigned to it, can do this? A recent report in thejournal.ie stated that a quarter of staff working in special emergency arrangements last year did not have the required documentation to work with vulnerable children. We know that Tusla has referred five emergency childcare providers to the Garda over vetting concerns. These concerns keep coming up. Stories in respect of children in accommodation who are unaccompanied minors in respect of international protection keep coming up, yet we are expected to pass this section and endorse legislation that is adding a substantial amount of workload. As I said last week, the pre-legislative scrutiny report was very critical of the capacity of Tusla to deal with the additional workload that will be put on it, yet the Minister of State has not had any answers to any of the questions he has been asked in respect of the capacity of Tusla. In fact, last week, he said he could not answer about Tusla as it is under another Department, but he is happy enough to introduce legislation that is putting responsibilities and will inevitably put an increased workload on Tusla. Will the Minister of State give assurances to the House this week that he was not able to provide last week?

Similarly, and as I have a background in primary teaching, I am quite concerned at giving Tusla more of a role. Many people would certainly question the merits of this because over the past five years, there have been 7,000 recorded cases of children going missing from Tusla care. I remember Tusla came before one of the committees, when it acknowledged that 33 separated children or unaccompanied minors who were seeking international protection are now officially missing. They are still missing today. That is 33 separated children; God knows where they are. With the amount of sexual exploitation and trafficking going on in the world at the moment, who knows where they are? I certainly have concerns about giving an extra role to a body that seems to already be overburdened and under-resourced.

I will be very quick in relation to this. We have had Tusla in front of the children's committee numerous times. It will talk about its new operating model. I do not take away from the complex cases but we are talking about putting a greater onus on the organisation. It has stated quite explicitly – I have brought this up with the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality, Deputy Norma Foley, in particular – that on the basis of its figures, it is 300 social workers short. It is at least 100 social care workers short. We all know there is an insufficient number of foster carers; it is probably upwards of 500 short. We are therefore putting pressure on an entity that is already under severe pressure. I agree with Deputy Carthy that there need to be some sort of utterances from the Minister for justice on accepting this proposal and some means of dealing with the matter. There is not much point in putting an already-under-pressure organisation under more pressure or setting it up for failure. The latter is not acceptable either. There has to be an element of fairness and recognition. Again, we are dealing with a timeline that has been thrust on the Minister because of the agreement in respect of the EU migration and asylum pact. I do not believe any of this is conducive to coming up with a real solution to dealing with the issues regarding international protection.

I refer Members to the conversation we had last week. It is the Government’s intention to ensure the system is fully resourced to deal with the outcomes of this legislation.

Amendments Nos. 21, 27, 29, 79 and 83 are related and may be discussed together, by agreement.

I move amendment No. 21: In page 32, to delete lines 14 to 18. In the first instance, I will speak about amendment No. 21. Let me quote the subsection of the Bill I am seeking to remove so we will have a sense of it. It provides: Where a member of An Garda Síochána, an immigration officer or an officer of the Minister has reasonable grounds for believing that it is in the interests of public policy or national security for an applicant to whom paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (4) applies to be subject to the obligation referred to in subsection (1), the member or officer may give the applicant a direction referred to in subsection (2). The direction refers to detaining and screening. Striking out the subsection would mean officers cannot direct people with lawful residency permission to attend screening centres on the basis of vague, undefined grounds. It also cuts off the path to grounds for arrest and detention. By definition, the people in question are not international protection applicants and as such, the State has no business arresting and detaining them under this legislation. It looks like illegitimate arrest and detention on the grounds of racial profiling. I am very cautious about how we legislate for detention in this country. It will be the defining part of this Bill. We are steamrolling through something that has monumental consequences and, while not looking to the future, we do not seem to be particularly reflective about our past. I think about the apology the Taoiseach made today in the Chamber and other apologies that have been made. We have a gruesome history of institutional incarceration in this country. I am really apprehensive about how this Bill will legislate not only for continuation but also for enhancement. We are legislating, in the subsection I am seeking to strike out, for the detention of people who have committed no crime at all. Our history demands that we tread more cautiously than we are at this point, which is why I am seeking to strike out the subsection.

I support Deputy Gannon on this amendment. It is incredibly sad that we are moving towards this system of detention not just in Ireland but also across Europe through the EU migration and asylum pact, particularly because it took the State so long to untangle international protection from pursuing people through arrest. The courts had to achieve that through a series of cases to eventually try to meet our commitments under the EU reception directive. The worst part is that we have never done international protection well. We were just about starting to get to the point where we would do that but then we had to deal with crises that hampered any well-intentioned efforts by the Government to address the matter. To take, lock, stock and barrel, what we did not have to take from the EU migration and asylum pact is concerning. It is often forgotten that we could have taken a modular approach to this but chose not to. Instead of taking that approach, we are moving towards a system that will detain people. The subsection is an example of an unlawful detention proposal that we cannot stand over as a State. Deputy Gannon is correct in that we have a history of this. We know what happens. This is a trend across multiple countries and we cannot stand by it. Therefore, I support amendment No. 21 and ask the Government to do the same.

I want to hear the Minister of State’s response on amendment No. 21 before I speak about it directly. Before that, I want to speak about amendment No. 79, which is grouped with amendment No. 21. I am not entirely sure why it is grouped because it relates to ensuring that in the statistics compiled by the Department, we include information provided by applicants for international protection regarding any prior immigration status or permission while in the State. I found it quite bizarre and very surprising that this information is not kept at source and compiled annually. I am referring to the number of people who apply for international protection who will have previously been in the State on another permit, whether it be a student permit, employment permit, other work-related permit, a short-stay tourism visa, a family reunification or dependant permit, or any other immigration permit. It is important that we get that information because it fits in with the conversation we were having last year. Assumptions are made all the time. I repeated on a number of occasions last week that we have had different Ministers saying different things in respect of the proportion of people who enter the State via the common travel area. Some Ministers have referred to a proportion of 80% and others have given other proportions. The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy McEntee, said at one stage it was up to 90%. That makes for a good headline, the implication being that since the 90% are coming across the Border, there is nothing the State can do about it. When you delve into the statistics, you realise there is no way Deputy McEntee or any other Minister can know the proportion because the Government has been assuming that every single person who presents for international protection but who has not presented at a port or airport has entered the State via the common travel area. However, we know from international experience and from states that compile the relevant figures that there are numerous other categories. Sometimes a person who has permission to be in the State will apply for international protection subsequently. To be clear, such people are entitled to apply and to have their applications adjudicated upon on the same basis as anybody else. If we are serious about having a comprehensive policy and a set of proposals on how to deal with these things, we clearly need to have the relevant information to hand. It would be helpful if the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, gave us an indication of his position because the chances of our getting to amendment No. 79 before 11 p.m. are fairly slim. We will have no Report Stage in the Dáil, which is bizarre. Either way, it is unacceptable. Could the Minister of State indicate whether, in the Seanad, the Government will be introducing an amendment on this matter?

We will support this amendment. We in the Labour Party have some similar amendments later, some of which we may get to and the rest of which I guarantee we will not. The power of arrest and detention is something we have to be very careful about. How we prescribe this in law, making such definitions in the Bill in the catch-all manner in which we are doing so, brings me to the view that there is in a kind of underhand way profiling going on of those who can be detained as to why they are detained. As a country, if we are going to go down that route, we are really letting ourselves down because we are better than that. We should be treating people with respect. We obviously have to have a rules-based system for doing this, but we have to be very careful of the manner in which we bring in arrest and detention for individuals. While there are quite a number of amendments later detailing those who are trafficked, those who are vulnerable and a number of others, we need to start with this amendment because we may not get to the rest of them. That is why I will certainly support the amendment brought forward by my colleagues in the Social Democrats.

Many of the points have been already made in support of Deputy Gannon's amendment. I truthfully cannot believe we are here legislating for the detention of innocent children. It is shocking that they can have committed no crime and done nothing wrong, yet we are legislating for their detention apparently if it "is in the minor’s best interests", despite the fact that we have heard from every corner of the expertise on this that it is never in the child's best interests. I am fascinated to hear what the Minister of State will say as to the justification for this. How can this be explained on the day when the Taoiseach, sitting where the Minister of State is right now, made an unequivocal apology to those who have suffered? In ten years', 20 years', 30 years' or 40 years' time, the State will once again apologise to the children in respect of whom it is legislating tonight for holding them against their will. I have serious, significant concerns about the determination of this; the decision-making. Who has the capacity? Who has the competency? On what grounds will these decisions be made? For how long? Where? The Government has told us in the legislation where this will not happen but it has not told us where it will happen. It will not tell us who will do this and on what grounds but it says it will ultimately always be in their "best interests". It is never in the best interest of a child to detain them, never mind the fact that it is proposed to detain them simply for existing.

I thank Deputy Gannon for bringing forward this amendment. I am deeply concerned to listen to the contributions here and what is being put forward and proposed by this Government. The use of violence by the State - detention is a form of violence - should have a very high bar. It should be taken extremely seriously. I have very real concerns about not just the thoughtfulness that has gone into this but also the direction of travel and what it means for human rights and natural rights and the concept of justice in this State. To be light-hearted in my contribution, I am reading fantasy novels these days. There is a conflict between various tribes in this book I am holding. It is an international bestseller-----

As long as it is relevant-----

It is relevant, a Cheann Comhairle. In this book they start closing the borders and detaining people from one tribe going to another. They start saying the refugees are no longer valid refugees. They start digging their heads into the sand. I read fiction to try to escape the non-fiction of our work, but sometimes there are certain echoes in fiction that tell a really important story. There is a real question here about a Government and a State that are putting their heads in the sand as to their human rights obligations, even just on a human level. It does not necessarily need to be international law. It does not even need to be concepts of justice. Even on a human level, a compassionate level and an empathetic level as to what people are experiencing, are we to say to those who are fleeing war and persecution that they will not be given rights to natural justice, human rights or any form of empathy when they come here? That seems completely out of character with the Irish State. I want to be very clear here: I do not believe that evaluating and reforming the immigration system is inherently racist, although many outside of this Chamber who are seeking reforms are. They are, thankfully, a minority in this country. While racism and systemic racism in particular must be condemned in all its forms, I fear that with the shift in immigration policy to the right, and it is a shift of immigration policy to the right, and in particular with this erasure of natural justice, natural rights and human rights, there is actually something more dangerous, more disastrous and, frankly, more terrifying. I am a big believer in democracy. I am a fervent believer in it. I am a fervent believer in the wisdom of the electorate. There are, however, times when the public get things wrong. We saw that in the UK with Brexit - buyer's remorse. We see it across the water, in the United States, with an Administration that is deeply unpopular, despite doing the things it promised to do. One of the reasons I am standing here today and why I am in politics is that I was in New York in 2016 when Trump was first elected. You could feel the sorrow on the streets of New York among New Yorkers. You could sense it. I could sense it in the offices as I went to work. I was speaking during the general election to a young man about why I went into politics and challenging what the Government is trying to do here: the rightward shift on things like immigration policy, the erosion of human rights and the erosion of the concepts of justice. I will say to the Minister of State what the young man said to me. He agreed with me and we had a very long conversation. He said the lessons of the 20th century are being forgotten. There were people who came here in the thirties, in the forties and in the fifties to escape the persecution of the forces of Europe. They came here to escape the Nazis. There were Jews fleeing the abomination of the Holocaust that Hitler created. There were people who were not Jewish who were fleeing the Nazis, fleeing Mussolini and fleeing Franco, and we gave them refuge and we gave them shelter. One of them, my constituency colleague's grandfather, started Waterford Crystal. It is a really important part of who we are and it is a really important lesson of the 20th century. I really fear that there are many states across Europe and across the world that are stridently repeating this mistake, going towards an ethnonationalism and a use of the full force of the state to enforce it. I do not think the Government is doing that here but I do think it is following a path that leads to that. The use of detention in this way is deeply concerning and deeply problematic for that reason.

I propose to take amendments Nos. 21, 27, 29, 79 and 83 together and I will reply to each one. I just want to say, though, before I begin that reply to each individual one, that I am a true believer in democracy. It is very important that we respect democracy and democratic outcomes. We have a Government, and this Government is committed to reform. That is what this legislation is about. I believe it is important to acknowledge that we are trying to reform a system that needs reform. At the end of that process there will still be international protection. There will still be a process that allows for people to come to our country.

But not human rights.

There will be a process. We have a refugee process as well and we have people who come here to work. All of them remain. It is very wrong to portray what is being done here in a particular way when what is actually being done is a process of reform. Amendment No. 21 proposes to delete section 22(5). That subsection provides that a member of An Garda Síochána, an immigration officer or an officer of the Minister may direct an applicant who holds a valid registration certificate under section 9(4)(a) of the Immigration Act 2004, or a minor exempt from registering under that section, to travel to a screening centre where it is in the interests of the public policy or national security. This is a necessary provision for ensuring that all international protection applicants undergo screening in those circumstances. This provision only applies to international protection applicants and not to persons registered under the Immigration Act. Therefore, I do not intend to accept this amendment. Amendment No. 27 seeks to remove the possibility that person given a direction under section 22(5) may be arrested and detained. I point out that these cases involve persons who may constitute a threat to public order, national security or both. It is important we have the possibility to identify such persons from the outset. It may be necessary to be able to arrest and detain such persons as a last resort for the purposes of verifying their identity. This is part of a coherent and well-functioning international protection system and, as such, I am unable to accept amendment No. 27. It appears that the purpose of amendment No. 29 is to remove the possibility that a person arrested under section 24(2) could be detained in a screening centre. For operational purposes it may be necessary for such a person to be detained in the screening centre while their identity is being verified. I remind Deputies the allowing of such detention is intended to be short term in nature until the applicant's identity is verified and in any event may not exceed two days. For that reason, I do not propose to accept amendment No. 29. I do not propose to accept amendment No. 79 because the entries into the screening form are standard across all member states. This is so relevant authorities can share the information regarding persons who have made previous international protection applications in the European Union before arriving in the State. The matters to be included in the screening form under section 31 are intended to align with the screening form provided in article 17 of the screening regulation. While it is not my intention to deviate significantly from the contents of the form as provided for in that article, the Deputy will note that there is a regulation-making power that enables the Minister to prescribe additional categories of information. I will keep the categories of information under review in light of the operational experience. The purpose of amendment No. 83 appears to be to provide that an additional applicant can be considered in the accelerated examination procedure if the preliminary health assessment and preliminary vulnerability assessment are not carried out. The effect of the amendment would be that any applicant could effectively prevent their application from being considered in the accelerated examination procedure simply by refusing to consent to their preliminary health assessment. It is likely that this could result in some applicants who would have been subject to the accelerated examination procedure refusing to undergo assessment. This would negate the benefits of having both a preliminary health assessment and the accelerated examination procedure in the first place. As such, I do not propose to accept amendment No. 83.

Amendments Nos. 22, 28, 53, 57, 177 and 179 are related and may be discussed together.

I move amendment No. 22: In page 32, between lines 34 and 35, to insert the following: "(f) an applicant who is a presumed or identified victim of trafficking.". These are grouped amendments along similar lines across the legislation. Amendment No. 22 inserts "an applicant who is a presumed or identified victim of trafficking". This is obviously critically important if added to amendment No. 28 as it exempts presumed and identified victims of trafficking from any legal obligation to travel to a screening centre and from related criminal penalties. This corresponds with what I spoke about earlier about people who are vulnerable, the profiling of them and the manner in which they are being treated. The Labour Party does not see any obligation as to why, as a country, we are going to treat them in this way. The fact they will not be exempt from this legal obligation really is a stain on our country if it proceeds. In tandem with that, amendment No. 57 is to ensure that vulnerability assessments take account of whether a person may be a victim of trafficking. Currently in this section it is not clear. In fact, it needs to be made clear that vulnerability assessments take account of whether a person could have been the victim of trafficking. It needs to be stated in the legislation. Amendment No. 177, which is also grouped, is again along the same lines and exempts victims of trafficking from the accelerated procedure. Throughout the Bill, we are exempting those who are victims of trafficking from going through what, unfortunately, many others are being put though as a result of this legislation. Amendment No. 179 ensures that the victims of trafficking will have special procedural guarantees not to be subject to the accelerated procedure. Throughout all of these five amendments we are ensuring that those who are, unfortunately, victims of trafficking, which we can see from recent reports continues to be a huge issue in this country, are treated in a dignified, humane and compassionate way and are not dealt with in a manner that will be a stain on our society if we allow this legislation to go through. This tries to ensure that those victims who have had their lives turned upside down are treated well by this State.

Before the Minister came in, the Minister of State talked about being a true democrat and about the Government having a democratic right to legislate. Nobody is refuting that. However, if the Minister knocked at any door in this country, as all of us across the Chamber do, who would ask that a victim of trafficking be compelled to go to a screening centre? There is no obligation on that. Screening procedures are not designed to ensure early trafficking detection. There are no clear referral pathways in the Bill to the national referral mechanism framework to identify and support victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. None of that exists in the Bill at the moment. We add a simple amendment where, if an applicant is presumed to be or is identified as a victim of trafficking, they will not be compelled to go to a screening centre where they can be detained. The Minister said it is for a potential maximum of two days, but there is no guarantee of that. Two days for a person who has been a victim of a horror unimaginable to all of us is a lifetime. It compounds trauma. It is unnecessary by any measurement. I would be interested to hear the Minister's reason as to how he will not be supporting a simple amendment such as this.

Human trafficking is a horrendous scourge on our society. It is a multibillion dollar crime that is carried out by organised crime gangs. The delicacy with which we have to treat victims of human trafficking cannot be overstated. I referenced earlier how long it had taken us, essentially driven by the courts, to untangle international protection from allegations of crime. The case I was referencing directly relates to these amendments because in 2019, a Vietnamese woman was found in a cannabis growhouse and it was her case that unlocked the fact that even though she had been trafficked, she still had to fight a prosecution against her and it took that case, after years of so much work from so many civil society organisations and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which I used to work for, to force this State to recognise the way that international protection and human trafficking are intertwined. To think that this Government is sleepwalking us back into a situation where people who are victims of human trafficking are going to be prosecuted, penalised and detained is head-in-the-sand stuff of the highest order. International protection is messy. Getting your documents ready to travel from a situation of persecution, conflict, war and torture is virtually impossible. The vulnerability that you put yourself in and the way that you make yourself so susceptible to exploitation by bad actors are off the charts, so to think we cannot see that nuance and intricacy within the process and legislate to effectively deal with it shocks me to the core. I support this amendment.

Human trafficking is a problem that needs to be eliminated. I believe Ireland is ranked in tier two in terms of international comparisons, which means we are not really doing what we should be doing or can do to eliminate human trafficking. In the region of 67 victims of trafficking were formally identified, including five to ten children, and in many cases they ended up being subject to labour, sexual and other of forms of exploitation. It is clear the State is not doing nearly enough in comparison with other countries to eliminate this pernicious form of exploitation.

I thank Deputies Gannon and Kelly for putting down this amendment. It is important to put it in context. What we are discussing here is chapter 2 of the provision that entitles me as Minister to designate a certain centre as a screening centre. That is provided for in section 21 of the legislation. The next section we are dealing with, which is under discussion here, is the obligation to travel to a screening centre. There are provisions set out in this section 22 that place an obligation on a person applying for international protection to travel to a screening centre. Subsection (6), however, sets out a number of individuals whom I exempt from travelling there. Where he or she considers it appropriate, the Minister may exempt an applicant to whom one of the following paragraphs applies. The six paragraphs I have set out there all concern individuals who verifiably come within the categorisation set out in the paragraphs. For instance, it applies to an applicant serving a term of imprisonment, an applicant detained in a children detention school or an applicant in respect of whom a warrant has been issued under the Extradition Act or who is subject to committal under section 29 of that Act or who has consented to surrender or subject to surrender under that Act. It also applies to an applicant in respect of whom a European arrest warrant has been issued or an applicant considered by a registered medical practitioner to be incapable for medical reasons of travelling to a screening centre. Deputies Gannon and Kelly want me to put in a seventh exemption, which would be an applicant who is a presumed or identified victim of trafficking. That is not a specific categorisation of person. Who is going to presume whether or not a person is a victim of trafficking? If it is the case, and I would be interested in hearing what Deputies say in respect of this, that an international protection applicant arrives in and says he or she is a victim of trafficking, does that mean that I, therefore, have to exempt that person from travelling to the screening centre? If that is the case, I am sure Deputies will recognise the fact that the obligation set out under the provisions of sections 21 and 22 could easily be circumvented if all an individual had to say was that he or she was a victim of trafficking. The other term used here is an applicant who is a presumed or identified victim of trafficking. Again, I ask Deputies Gannon and Kelly to tell me who will do that identification. How is this going to work in practical terms whether it is at the centre where somebody is applying or at one of our ports? How will it be presumed or determined that a person is a victim of trafficking? I propose to discuss amendment No. 22 along with amendments Nos. 28, 53, 57, 177 and 179. The Government is firmly committed to protecting and supporting victims of human trafficking, recognising them as a particularly vulnerable cohort. Screening is an important mechanism for recognising potential victims of trafficking, routing them for further assessment and ensuring they can access the supports they need. I also want to clarify that a statement by an individual that he or she has been trafficked does not in itself confer presumed or identified status. A formal assessment is required and must be undertaken by the designated competent authority responsible for formal identification under the existing national referral mechanism, NRM, namely, An Garda Síochána. Careful consideration is needed to ensure operational and legislative alignment of the NRM with the new asylum and migration procedures introduced by this Bill. My officials will continue to examine the matters raised in these amendments with a view to establishing what, if any, ministerial amendments will be necessary. One point deserves further emphasis. Many times individuals may not be aware that they are the victims of trafficking or that they are being trafficked and the screening process is an important mechanism for recognising potential victims of trafficking. I understand the basis on which Deputies Gannon and Kelly put forward this amendment but it is not specific in terms of how is it going to be presumed or who is going to identify the person as a victim of trafficking. I would appreciate if the Deputies would tell me how that would be done. It is also important to point out that there is a benefit in the screening process for the purpose of seeking to identify somebody who is a victim of human trafficking.

The answer to the Minister's question about how we would do it is that if we are seeking to detain people, we have an obligation to determine whether they are victims of of human trafficking. The Minister mentioned the NRM but that extends well beyond An Garda Síochána. There are supposed to be civil society groups that are available through the NRM and are compelled and empowered to identify victims of human trafficking. One of the criticisms of this Bill going through pre-legislative scrutiny was that there was too much ministerial control. This is an amendment that gives more oversight to the Minister to allow for this as a ground and I cannot understand why he would push back on it. The Minister asked how we are supposed to tell whether somebody is just claiming to be a victim of trafficking. This betrays the level of mistrust this Government has regarding people in the international protection system if the starting point is always that people are here to cheat the system, to game it and to take advantage of our systems. That is what is coming through in this kind of thinking - how do we police it? Through this legislation and through being a signatory to the migration and asylum pact at EU level, we are placing multiple barriers in front of the right to claim asylum, which is an internationally upheld right. We do not agree that we should be doing those things but if we are going to go down that path, then we have every obligation to protect people who are trafficked. I agree with the Minister that many people do not know that they have been trafficked and that it is messy and hard but that is all the more reason those people need to be protected at every stage of the process. The vulnerability assessments have got to a place where they are a box-ticking exercise. The only way we can identify these things properly is by actually working with people and listening to them over a long period to make sure they are being given the services they need to support them at the most difficult time of their lives. I am afraid that the questions that the Minister is putting forward do not hold water. They simply belie this attitude of mistrust when we should be extending our offer of support to people when they need it most.

In the first instance, a victim of trafficking will be identified by their vulnerability assessment. That is provided for under the special reception conditions. I am surprised the Minister did not know that. Given the day that we had today in the Dáil when another State apology was made, I cannot help thinking of the words of Christine Buckley. I am sure most of us around the Chamber remember the incredible work of Christine Buckley, who shone a light into one of the darkest corners in this State and finally delivered a State apology for victims of institutional incarceration. Christine had a phrase which she used constantly: " I believe you before you open your mouth". That was Christine's line. We are now standing in the Chamber processing potentially the most important legislation of certainly the next five years and it factors in detention. We are having a discussion about why should we believe a person when they come forward and say they were a victim of trafficking. We have talked about categories. What category of person does the Minister think would stand in front of another person and falsely say that they had been a victim of trafficking or modern slavery? I do not know that individual. I have not met that individual. I do want the Minister to legislate for that individual. I want to legislate for a humane and compassionate system in which we actually build trust into our legislation. The Minister might say that this is some sort of nonsense on my part, but I know what the opposite looks like, and it does not look like the type of system that is reflective of a republic that has learned the lessons for which it previously apologised for.

Even though we have disagreed on quite a bit and despite the way he is guillotining this whole debate, the Minister has conducted himself in a fair way but his previous response smacked of a different tone. He let himself down. I do not know; maybe he was going back to his barrister days. It almost came across like a challenge to us. Who cares whether it is perfectly prescribed, as the Minister sees it, in this Bill. It goes beyond all of that. If he does not like our wording, he can table another amendment. He should bring it through the Seanad and then back to this House. However, if we, as a country, cannot have a system whereby within this legislation whereby there is a vulnerability assessment done and we cannot say that we know or believe that somebody is being trafficked, then we are letting everything we stand for as a country down. There are many professional organisations and people who can work with the State to help deal with this matter. It is not a debate about how we decide whether somebody is trafficked. That is being done every day of the week. That is not the debate. The debate is around whether the Minister has the will do it, whether it is by accepting these amendments or bringing forward his own. If the Minister stood up and said that he is willing to bring forward his own to deal with the matter, that would be something. When it comes to the issue, the fact is that we are not treating people who are in a very vulnerable state in the manner in which we should. We are not practising what we preach. As a State, we have not learned from past issues, and we are going very close to bone given what was apologised for today. The Minister needs to reflect on this because if he does not deal with this, there will be a situation whereby we will be looking back at this in the future and saying that we pointed out that it was wrong thing to do, but the Minister ploughed on with it and we now have all these situations. We do not want to end up in that scenario. By reply, he might say that he might deal with this. If he is not happy with my amendment or Deputy Gannon's, he might say that he is going to deal with it in the Seanad. Either way, the first amendment is mine and I will press it.

I want to respond to Deputy Kelly's point. I listened very carefully to what Deputies Kelly, Gannon and Gibney had to say. I take it seriously and I am fully aware of what political objective they are seeking through these amendments. They are perfectly legitimate, and I respect them. We are talking about an amendment to section 22. It is headlined, "Obligation to travel to screening centre". I have not designated any areas as screening centres yet but if, following enactment, I designate Citywest, which is a well-known example, and I ask someone, who comes into Ireland and claims international protection, to go to the screening centre in Citywest, part of the reason an applicant is asked to go a screening centre is to enable the preliminary and vulnerability assessment to be done. That is part of the process of asking somebody to travel to a screening centre. It is not unreasonable on the part of the State to put an obligation on an individual who has come in claiming international protection to travel to a screening centre. It is not an excessive burden on that person. The amendment that Deputy Kelly wants to make is that if somebody is a presumed or identified victim that the Minister of the day could decide that they do not have to go there, but I do not understand why I would not want them to go there if that is the place where they are going to have their vulnerability and preliminary assessment carried out. That is an integral part of it. I am sorry if I sounded like a barrister. I do not intend to.

It is okay.

However, I do sometimes consider legislation from the point of view of how it will be determined if it is before a court or a judge. The amendment the Deputy wants to insert relates to an applicant who is a presumed or identified victim of trafficking. I am not trying to make a legal point, but I need to know, and a court would need to know with precision how the Minister knows if somebody is a presumed victim of trafficking, or how he knows if they are an identified victim of trafficking. Deputy Gibney may disagree me with on this, but it cannot just be that if the person says they are a victim of trafficking, that is it. In that instance, why are we going through the whole process? When people come in and say they are fleeing persecution, why do we not tell them they are entitled to international protection because they said they are fleeing persecution? It would be completely inconsistent to say that a person is a victim of trafficking simply because they say so. We do not automatically accept that. I do not think any Member is suggesting that if a person arrives and says they are entitled to refugee status, they should automatically get it.

The Minister presents to us a hypothetical scenario where someone comes in and is sent to Citywest. This is the system he is presenting to us. We are trying our best to fix parts within it, which we believe will make it a humane and fairer system. Given the Minister presented one hypothetical scenario, here is another one. Let us say a government of the future is even harder on migration than this one is and has even more right-wing views on international protection, which penalise people for being in the system at all, and there is a screening centre that is a set of tents in a field in the middle of the country. We are going to send somebody there who, coming off the boat, is pleading with officials that they are a victim of international trafficking. The Minister cannot just present one hypothetical and expect to say this is going to work for it. It is the Minister's responsibility to build in the processes that will identify victims of trafficking so they are not treated in ways that retraumatise, penalise and prosecute them in ways that are just not humane within this system. That is what we are saying. We appreciate that there is a system to deal with international protection that allows for people to put forward their claim for asylum and for it to be treated. Within that system, there are also people who have been trafficked and who have experienced incredibly egregious crimes against them. We are trying to allow for those people to be treated differently within this cohort of people looking for international protection. That is what this amendment tries to do and that is what we are trying to resolve with it.

This is a product of the process we were left with because of the approach the Minister has taken to this Bill. We are now 20 minutes away from cut-off. I know the Minister had an issue with the number of TDs who spoke to a particular amendment but, realistically, we have not had a proper engagement on any amendment up until this point or on any section. As the Minister knew, when he insisted he was going to bring it forward on the floor of the Dáil, it is not conducive to having a proper conversation and deliberation. In respect of this amendment, I support it. The Minister can argue that the movers of the amendment should have brought forward a particular definition and clarifications on how the presumption would be made and what the basis of that would be in law. I made the point that we were nearly being criticised earlier for having too many TDs, but one of the benefits of having a larger number of TDs is the fact that, as tough as it is, I and one member of staff can spend our time going through a piece of justice legislation and, even then, cannot go through all the material that comes from the Minister's Department, to be quite honest about it. However, when you are dealing with other, smaller parties that do not have the same wherewithal, we see individual TDs dealing with multiple portfolios. Our party was in that position before and it becomes much more difficult. The question for me, when we are dealing with an Opposition amendment, is the principle of the amendment. Of course, the Minister could decide he is going to accept the principle in respect of people who are identified as victims of trafficking. Then he could go to his officials and say let us figure out how we get this done, in the same way he has done for all the measures he wanted to cater for. In that regard, it is the principle of the amendment I am supporting and I am doing so as somebody who does not necessarily have an issue with the concept of screening centres or the obligation on people who are applicants for international protection of presenting to a screening centre. I have an issue with regard to the legislation, where it simply says that the Minister may designate a premises once he is satisfied the premises is suitable. That is even less clear than any amendment the Opposition has put forward in respect of what exactly will constitute an appropriate location, what the basis will be, or whether there will be provisions in regard to the distance somebody will be expected to travel. We talked about applicants being all over the country, whether they will all be expected to go to Citywest and if it is not happening. The Minister is shaking is head but we do not know because the legislation certainly does not say. In respect of amendment No. 22, I want to put on the record that we support it on the basis that we support the principle of it. If the Minister really wanted to have a teased-out discussion on how all of this would work on a practical basis, the point has been made but I will make it again: we should be having this conversation in the committee room.

I reiterate that the screening procedures, as designed, are not designed to ensure early detection of human trafficking and modern slavery. There is also no clear referral pathway in the Bill in regard to the national referral mechanism. That is really important because I think something that has not really been understood yet in the 13 hours we have given to this Committee Stage is that this Bill comes into law on 12 June. The Minister does not yet have the multi-annual national referral mechanism set up for victims of trafficking. That is an extraordinary gap. I hope we will get to vote on this amendment so I will be quick.

I thank the Deputy. Does the Minister wish to respond?

No.

As it is 11 p.m. and the time for the debate has concluded, I am required to put the following question in accordance with the order of the Dáil of 24 February: "That the amendments set down by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration and not disposed of are hereby made to the Bill; in respect of each of the sections undisposed of, other than section 141, which is hereby deleted, that the section or, as appropriate, the section, as amended, is hereby agreed to; the Title, as amended, is hereby agreed to; the Bill, as amended, is accordingly reported to the House; Fourth Stage is hereby completed; and the Bill is hereby passed."