2026-02-10

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. I support the overall objectives and the thrust of the Bill, namely providing a fair, sustainable and more efficient system that is consistent with how these laws are operating and will operate across the European Union. I support efforts to provide clearer and shorter timelines in respect of asylum decisions. The Bill will put in place a new framework to manage migration and asylum for the long term and ensure that Ireland's policy aligns with other EU countries. While reform in this area is much needed and overdue and while a more efficient decision-making system is a positive goal, there are some aspects of the legislation which require further scrutiny. In particular, I am concerned about the clause that prevents adults who are beneficiaries of protection from seeking family reunification for a period of three years following the granting of such protection. While I recognise that the current system is under significant strain and requires reform, it is essential that we find a balance between improving efficiency and upholding the rights of applicants and, in line with our own history, that we take a humane approach to this issue. It is an incredibly sensitive issue for many people. Many aspects of this Bill are positive, but we have to look at that three-year limit. There must be a balance between bringing our own laws into line with those of our EU counterparts and recognising that some of the most vulnerable people who would be beneficiaries of protection deserve our support. I see one year as a fair limit for spousal reunification, recognising that having a family member here gives a person the ability to integrate and find work and provides a vital social connection when they are here. Last year, 153 spouses were granted permission to come to Ireland under family reunification arrangements for holders of international protection. To place this in context, more than 123,000 people entered Ireland in the same period, so that is just 0.12% of that total. However, their presence plays a crucial part in helping those who get protection restore a sense of normality and security in their lives when they are here. The Minister stated that he has an open mind in the context of amending the family reunification provisions on Committee Stage. I will be writing to him in that regard. I look forward to further engaging with him as the Bill progresses.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. The International Protection Bill 2026 is the legislative vehicle for Ireland's wholesale opt-in to the EU migration and asylum pact, and that is its fundamental flaw. Sinn Féin has been clear that the major part of this pact is not in Ireland's interests. It undermines Irish sovereignty, hands critical powers relating to migration and asylum to the European Union and directly impedes our ability to make decisions based on our own unique circumstances. We are an island nation. We are not in the Schengen Area, but we are part of a common travel area, CTA, with a state outside the EU. Our challenges, from managing the CTA to our housing crisis and stretched public services, are specific to us. Yet, this Government has signed up to a one-size-fits-all EU system, ignoring the unanimous cross-party recommendation of the Oireachtas committee on justice to reconsider opting out of the major part of the pact. This is a profound failure of political judgment. Let us be clear about what this Bill does. It ties us into rigid EU timelines and procedures that our system, by the Government's own admission, is not ready to meet yet. We have a protection system already in crisis, with massive backlogs, appeals, delays and unenforced deportation orders. The Government's staffing projections reveal a gaping hole between what is needed and what is in place. Failure to meet these new EU deadlines will not just mean continued dysfunction, it will expose the Irish State to daily infringement fines from Europe. We are signing a blank cheque with taxpayers' money. This Bill risks outsourcing elements of our independent foreign policy. It should be for the Irish Government to decide, based on our principles of neutrality and human rights, from which conflicts we offer sanctuary. We cannot allow those decisions to be indirectly shaped by the foreign policy priorities of larger EU states. The Bill and this Government are blind to the fact that the civil legal aid system and Tusla are a breaking point. This Bill will place unbearable new demands on them. We have seen the tragic vulnerability of unaccompanied minors disappearing from safe care. To proceed without fixing these foundations in the first instance is irresponsible and dangerous. Let us address what this Bill distracts from, namely the real Government-made crises in our system. These include the profiteering from State accommodation contracts where a small number of private operators make millions while communities are left without support, the scandalous planning of exemptions that ignore local capacity and the lack of a coherent, funded integration strategy that builds social cohesion from the ground up. That is where the focus of attention should be, but of course it is not. Sinn Féin supported two aspects of the EU pact, the asylum and immigration management regulation and Eurodac. We did so because they are practical and help to determine the responsible member state for an application and provide a vital fingerprint database to combat trafficking and manage returns, for want of a more humane term. Our engagement should have ended with picking measures that serve Ireland's needs. Instead, the Government has voluntarily surrendered our flexibility and ignored the safeguard of Protocol 21, which is precisely designed to protect our sovereignty in areas like this. It has tied the hands of future Irish Governments in dealing bilaterally with Britain on CTA matters. We need an international protection system that is fair, efficient and enforced. It should be one that commands public confidence. This Bill does not deliver that. It legislates for a rushed adoption of an EU framework that does not fit Ireland, overseen by a Government that has not prepared for the consequences. We do not fix a broken system by layering on more unattainable obligations from Brussels. We fix it by addressing the profiteering, enforcing the rules, investing in integration and making sovereign decisions in the best interests of the Irish people. I urge Deputies to reject this Bill.

Ní réiteach atá sa Bhille seo, ach géilleadh ar ár bhflaitheas. Trí glacadh go hiomlán le comhaontú imirce agus tearmainn an Aontais Eorpaigh, tá neamhaird déanta ag an Rialtas ar fhírinne an tsaoil sa Stát seo, is í sin ná nach bhfuil muid mar chuid den limistéar Schengen; tá Teorann againn leis an dTuaisceart; agus tá comhlimistéar taistil againn leis an mBreatain. Tá Sinn Féin soiléir gur chóir go ndéanfaí na cinntí faoin inimirce i mBaile Átha Cliath, seachas sa Bhruiséal. Ní féidir linn tacú le creatlach a chuirfidh srianta ar rialtais eile amach anseo agus a dhéanann neamhaird ar bhuairt a léirigh an coiste um dhlí agus ceart san Oireachtais d’aon ghuth. Tá spriocdhátaí daingne socraithe ag an Aontas Eorpach agus, gan a dhóthain foirne nó tacaíochtaí dlí againn lena gcur i bhfeidhm, táimid ag tarraingt fíneálacha gan stad orainn féin as na sáruithe a bheidh le teacht. Tacaíonn muid le comhoibriú praiticiúil, ar nós Eurodac don ghrinnfhiosrú, ach diúltaíonn muid roimh smacht a chaitheamh amú. Teastaíonn córas ó Éirinn atá cothrom agus éifeachtach, córas atá múnlaithe ag muintir na hÉireann go háirithe. This Bill is not about fixing a broken system. It is not about fixing what is broken in Ireland's international protection system. It is about locking the State into a framework that will shape migration and asylum policy for years to come with serious interventions and implications for sovereignty, capacity, fairness and public confidence. At its core, this legislation gives effect to the Government’s decision to opt into the EU migration and asylum pact. Sinn Féin has been clear and consistent. The vast majority of that pact is not in Ireland’s interests. Our position is straightforward. Decisions on migration and international protection should be made in Ireland by an Irish Government accountable to the Irish people and shaped by our own circumstances and responsibilities. What is most disappointing - and frankly most telling - is that this Government ignored a unanimous, cross-party recommendation of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. After detailed pre-legislative scrutiny, that committee explicitly recommended that the Government reconsider opting into the majority of the EU migration and asylum pact. It was unanimous, cross-party and clear but the Government brushed it aside. Why bother with scrutiny if Ministers have already decided the outcome? It is also disgraceful that the Minister is not allowing the proper scrutiny of this Bill where the justice committee was also very clear that it wanted to do scrutiny of this Bill on Committee Stage in the committee. The Government is now scheduling this Bill before the Dáil next week. Second Stage of this Bill is to conclude on Thursday afternoon but the amendments for Committee Stage have to put in by Thursday morning. It shows the Government for what it is. Ireland has a legal right under Protocol 21 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to opt-in or opt-out of measures in the area of freedom, security and justice on a case-by-case basis. That flexibility was central to securing public consent for the Treaty of Lisbon. People voted on the understanding that Ireland would retain control over sensitive areas like migration, asylum and justice. This Government chose not to use that flexibility. Instead, it signed Ireland up wholesale to a pact that transfers decision-making power away from this State and into EU-level mechanisms even where those mechanisms are ill-suited to Ireland’s position. That is a political choice; it is the wrong choice. Ireland is not a typical EU member state. We are not part of Schengen. We share a common travel area with a state outside the European Union. We have a land border with a non-EU jurisdiction. Yet officials acknowledged at the committee that there was no meaningful consideration of the common travel area when opting into this pact, despite repeated Government claims that most applicants arrive via that route. That is extraordinary. By tying Ireland fully into the EU system, the Government reduces the flexibility of future Irish Governments to respond pragmatically, including bilaterally with Britain, to changing migration patterns. It ties the hands of the Irish State and it does so unnecessarily. Even setting sovereignty concerns aside, which we do not, there is a more immediate problem. The State is not ready for this. The justice committee heard directly that failure to meet pact obligations could expose Ireland to infringement proceedings and significant daily fines. Yet officials could not say how much the State may be liable for. For 15,000 applications, staffing projections rise to over 1,500 people. For 18,000 applications, it is nearly 1,800 people. In mid-2025, there were fewer than 1,000 staff across the relevant bodies with vacancy rates already above 10%. We already have excessive delays. Decisions are already taking far too long and appeals even longer still. Now the Government proposes rigid EU-mandated deadlines without the staffing, infrastructure, or legal supports required to ensure fairness. That is how a system collapses. That is how states end up with fines for failures that were entirely predictable. We do not need the EU pact to fix the issues in the Irish international protection system. There are glaring problems that the Minister has failed to address. He has been in the job now for over a year and despite the headlines, he has very little to show for it. Decisions are taking too long. The median processing time was 15 months in quarter 3 of last year. Appeals are taking longer still. The latest figure we have showed that processing times are over 16 months. That is the longest they have been in four years. We are going backwards not forwards. This means that it is now taking two and half years from beginning to end to process an application. Let me spell it out because it is an important point. We did not need to sign up to the EU pact to sort out the delays in processing applications. We do not need and did not need the pact to fix the delays in the appeals system. We definitely do not need the pact to stop the wild profiteering. Those failures fall at the Minister's feet and the feet of this Government. The committee also raised serious concerns about the impact of this legislation on Tusla and the civil legal aid system. Both are already stretched and at breaking point. Tusla is responsible for some of the most vulnerable children in the State, including unaccompanied minors. Children have gone missing from care. There are known risks of trafficking and exploitation. Yet this Bill piles new obligations onto Tusla without addressing those failures. The same applies to legal aid. Accelerated procedures mean nothing if people cannot access timely, effective legal advice. Speed without fairness is not efficiency. It is injustice. Let me be clear. Sinn Féin did not oppose everything in the EU pact. We supported the asylum and migration management regulation because it allows Ireland to return applicants to the member state where they should be properly processed. We supported Eurodac because we believe that access to fingerprint data assists with vetting, child protection, tackling trafficking and enforcing decisions. Those measures serve Ireland’s interests. What we opposed - and continue to oppose - are measures that undermine Irish sovereignty, impose rigid procedures and fail to account for Ireland's realities. Protocol 21 exists precisely so Ireland can make those distinctions. This Government chose not to. One of the clearest symptoms of failure in the current system is the way IPAS accommodation has been imposed on communities without planning, assessment or engagement. New centres should only be located in areas properly resourced to accommodate them, not in communities that are already struggling. Site selection needs to be based on a pre-assessment of community capacity, including access to GPs, school places, transport and existing levels of disadvantage. At the same time, we cannot ignore the scale of profiteering that has been allowed to exist under this Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government. It is eye watering. An estimated €1.2 billion of taxpayers' money was spent on IPAS accommodation in 2025 alone. Bed-per-night rates are skyrocketing. They are up 68% in two years. A small number of private operators under this Government are making millions while communities are left in the dark and services are being overwhelmed. The Comptroller and Auditor General has been scathing in relation to this. The profiteering in this sector needs to come to an end and come to an end very quickly. Ireland needs a migration and international protection system. We need one that is fair, efficient, humane and, crucially, enforced. However, this Bill does not deliver that. Instead, it locks Ireland into a pact that undermines sovereignty, ignores our unique circumstances, overestimates State capacity and risks repeating the very failures that brought the system into crisis. Sinn Féin believes Ireland can do better by making decisions in this House, planning properly, supporting integration and enforcing rules fairly. For those reasons, we cannot support the Bill.

Every state requires a functioning internal protection system. Being fit for purpose requires such systems to fit a number of criteria. It is regrettable that the Minister is not only failing on every front in this regard but his approach in this Bill is, in effect, an abdication of his responsibility. Nothing is more indicative of this than his response to my party colleague Deputy Carthy in the earlier part of this debate two weeks ago. When speaking on the asylum and migration pact, the Minister said: "[I]t would not be legally possible to seek to opt out even if this was the democratic wish of the Houses of the Oireachtas." There are parts of the pact it makes sense for Ireland to opt in to, such as Eurodac and screening, for example, which are perfectly sensible. However, the vast majority of the pact will not solve the issues we face. If a legal requirement solved Government failures, we would not have the scandalous backlog it is overseeing in terms of assessment of needs. If a legal requirement would address the incompetence of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, I would propose there be such a requirement regarding the number of members of An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces. The fact is the Government wantonly breaks the law and engages in what I call "lawfare" against families, including, in one scandalous instance, compiling dossiers on those simply seeking to vindicate the rights of their children. Aside from the measures Sinn Féin has outlined we would support, the pact offers nothing the Government could not simply choose to do while retaining flexibility. Instead, it is choosing to tie the hands of future governments and expose Ireland to fines when it inevitably fails to meet the pact requirements. The Minister will say, as he said to Deputy Carthy, that there is nothing he can do. In fact, he has chosen to have no choice. All the while, his party leader, the Taoiseach, has a new-found passion for sovereignty while discussing gutting the neutrality protection provided by the triple lock. There is no talk of sovereignty from Fianna Fáil while ceding sovereignty to Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, investor courts. There is no talk of sovereignty from the benches opposite when the Government uses the European Union as an excuse as to why it refuses to economically sanction Israel for genocide. Yet, we hear talk of sovereignty from the Government today when it is choosing, needlessly and basely, to abdicate that sovereignty to Europe in respect of international protection. The only explanation I can see is that the Minister thinks it will hereafter be a politically convenient excuse to blame Europe for the farce of his own making. The adoption of the pact by way of this Bill will not in itself address issues in terms of capacity or quality of accommodation, the standard of which has failed for decades to meet the threshold of human dignity. It will not address the delays in decision-making or the lack of enforcement should a person be deemed not to be entitled to international protection. It will not address concerns as to the impact the measures will have on the civil legal aid scheme or on Tusla, which is already stretched to breaking point. It will do none of that. These are all measures the Government could have taken but did not. They are things it could do now without legislating for the pact but it is not doing so. This Bill is not the solution to the problems faced by our international protection system. It is the Minister throwing in the towel and saying he is not up to the job. It will, however, do one job. It will give Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael a handy scapegoat for ongoing failures. It will do so at the expense of the Irish taxpayer and Irish sovereignty, and that is utterly shameful.

I speak on this Bill on behalf of my colleague Deputy Kelly. There are a number of points that really need to be emphasised in this debate. One is that the Government is not doing enough to present the case for inward migration. It is a fact that this country is dependent on migration and many sectors of our economy are held together by migrant workers, including the care, hospitality and tourism sectors. I am not just talking about people on work visas or student visa; I refer also to asylum seekers. Contrary to what some people in certain quarters would have us believe, asylum seekers come to this country to seek sanctuary but also to work and contribute. The State makes it quite difficult for them to do so but they make a valid contribution and that contribution needs to be acknowledged more than it is. People who come here seeking asylum want a better life. They are fleeing war, famine and persecution. They come here for safety but they also want to be able to give their family a better life and to contribute to the communities in which we all live. I have no issue in principle with reforming our immigration framework. In fact, the Labour Party was the first party to put forward, in 2023, a comprehensive policy paper on immigration reform. Leaving aside the issues we have with what the Government is proposing in the Bill, which I will come to presently, I have a huge problem with the performative politics we have seen from the Minister, including tweeting about deportation flights. I have a huge problem with the performative politics from the Tánaiste in making inaccurate statements in relation to housing and immigration. I have a massive problem with the performative politics we have seen from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent Members in government. There has been no attempt by the Government to present the positive case for migration and very little attempt to combat the misinformation and, in some cases, the outright lies from people who have sought to cause division within communities in recent years. There are real consequences to their actions. We are seeing migrant care workers having racist abuse roared at them on the street. Last year, in Tallaght, if my memory serves, an Indian who was barely in the country a week was beaten to a pulp and had his clothes ripped off him. We all want to see a more efficient immigration system in which decisions are made quickly and clearly. The changes the Government is proposing in this Bill are not palatable to the Labour Party from a human rights perspective. I actually would have more confidence in these provisions if they were being proposed in a sincere way to improve the system and if the Government were simultaneously driving home hard the point that immigration is fundamentally a good thing, is a sign of a well-functioning economy and country, that we need immigrants and that they are welcome here. The Government has not done that. Instead, we have a situation where arguments being made that are fundamentally racist are being legitimised. The Government is trying out a performative tough-on-immigration stance and is undermining human rights in the process. We have seen how successive UK governments, whether Tory or now, shamefully, Labour, have gone down this road. It does not work because no matter how far to the right a government goes in this regard, it will never be enough for some people. My concern is that the Bill goes further than the EU migration pact, with which we had issues in the first instance, because the Government wants to further constrain the rights of migrants. I do not dispute that our immigration system should be rules based. It should be efficient and clear but it also must uphold fundamental human rights. Rather than vindicating those rights, the Bill seems more intent on constraining them. My colleague Deputy Ahern spoke the previous day about the issues with the term "legal counselling". We have not had any clarity from the Minister in the interim on what that term means. It remains undefined and we do not know who will provide it. On the face of it, it seems it will be little more than a one-way information-providing session given to asylum applicants who will then be left to go through the application process by themselves with little or no guidance. The migration pact makes effective legal assistance a requirement. The Government could and should have used the term "legal advice" but it has actively and deliberately chosen not to do so. It is very easy to imagine a scenario where the absence of proper legal advice leads to errors in applications and sees genuine asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution fail in their applications or be denied specialist care. Perhaps that is the aim - I do not know - but it represents an absolute failure in the obligations we have towards migrants. I know how important legal advice is for people seeking asylum here, both in trying to navigate the system and in vindicating their rights. I know the Minister also understands, in his professional capacity, how important that is. For that reason, I cannot conclude anything other than that this is an attempt to reduce the number of successful applicants. It is not about ensuring the human rights of migrants are upheld. It is not about creating a faster, more efficient and fairer system. We would welcome a Bill that did that. However, this Bill seems to be more of an effort from us to sidestep our obligations, an attempt at performative politics by a Government that is trying to appear as if it is tough on immigration. There are a load of other issues I could raise with this Bill. I touched on how it will increase the criminalisation of international protection applicants and the issues in that regard, but I could also raise issues around unaccompanied children, the powers vested in the Minister, safeguarding, the chief inspectorate, the appeals process, detention and vulnerability assessments. There is so much more I could raise. I know the Minister has indicated that a raft of amendments will be tabled. They have not been tabled yet, however, so it is difficult for us to properly scrutinise these issues. This is very much an incomplete Bill. It is half-baked, notwithstanding that we are only on Second Stage. I hope the Minister's amendments will provide a greater degree of clarity and compassion. Ultimately, I hope the version of the Bill that passes is very different from the one before us.

We move to a Government slot. I call Deputy Dolan.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the International Protection Bill 2026. Fianna Fáil welcomes this debate because we believe it is vital and important. We fundamentally believe in the right to claim asylum. That principle is not optional. It is a cornerstone of international law and a test of our values as a country. Equally, we are committed to a fair but firm system, one that respects the dignity of those who genuinely need protection while also safeguarding the integrity of our borders and the credibility of our immigration and asylum system. If public confidence in the fairness and effectiveness of the system is lost, we risk undermining the very protections that exist for those who need them most. This Bill matters because it is a reset. It is the most comprehensive reform of international protection law in the history of the State. It will replace the International Protection Act 2015. It is vital. At the crux of this, a system that is too slow is unfair to everyone. It does not serve applicants who are granted protection because they can spend years stuck in limbo, unable to properly integrate, plan and build a stable future. It does not serve the State because long delays place huge pressure on accommodation capacity, health services, educational services and community infrastructure. It does not serve local communities because the longer a system drags on, the more it fuels frustration, misinformation and fear, and it creates an environment in which bad actors can exploit legitimate public concerns. This is not good for Ireland and it is not good for genuine refugees either. The Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Deputy O'Callaghan, has been clear that our current system can be more efficient, faster and less costly. That is what this Bill is designed to achieve. The Bill also ensures Ireland has a sustainable and credible system in line with the EU migration and asylum pact. The pact is designed to upgrade the common European asylum system so that there is a consistent, fair, sustainable and efficient asylum procedure across the EU, not just in ordinary times but also in periods of migratory pressure and crisis. Ireland has opted in to key elements of the pact. That was the right decision because a common system across the EU ensures applicants are treated the same in every member state. That matters. It reduces the incentive for people to move from one EU state to another, reduces secondary movement and ensures responsibility is shared more fairly. Crucially, it ensures Ireland is not isolated in how we manage migration and asylum because this is not a challenge any one country can solve alone. It is important to highlight what this Bill does. It ensures speed, structure and fairness. This Bill is not about closing the door to asylum; it is about creating a system that works. It introduces major reforms in four key areas. It introduces, first, a streamlined decision-making process; second, a streamlined returns process; third, a new border procedure with strict time limits; and, fourth, new institutional structures, including a new appeals body and an independent inspectorate. This is a rules-based reform. That is the central point. It is about moving from a system that is slow and inconsistent to one that is rules-based, predictable and efficient. One of the most important reforms in the Bill is the strengthening of screening procedures. Part 2 provides for the taking of biometric data and the screening of applicants, including the designation of screening centres, the screening process, and preliminary health and vulnerability checks. This is not about suspicion; it is about the basics of a functioning system. The State has a right and an obligation to know who is in the country, to verify identity and nationality and to ensure there are checks against relevant databases, where necessary. Screening is envisaged as a one-stop shop, a practical system to carry out checks, register and lodge applications and determine the appropriate procedure. It also includes preliminary health and vulnerability checks. That is vital because a humane system must identify those who need healthcare, those who are vulnerable, those who may be children and those who need special supports. This is not only good administration; it is a human rights issues as well. The Bill also provides for applicants to receive an international protection applicant card. That is a sensible and necessary reform. It allows applicants to identify themselves to national authorities and to access their rights for the duration of the procedure. It brings order, clarity and structure, and it reduces the confusion that can arise in communities and services when people have no consistent documentation. Another key reform in this Bill is the restructuring of decision-making at first instance and on appeal. Under the Bill, officers of the Minister will directly make decisions on international protection applications. However, most significantly, a negative decision will be issued as one decision, including a decision that an applicant does not qualify for refugee status, a decision that the applicant is not eligible for subsidiary protection and a return decision under Part 9. For the first time in Irish legislation, a return decision will be issued together with the decision rejecting an international protection application. This is a major change. It is essential because one of the greatest weaknesses in our current system is that refusal does not automatically translate into an effective and timely return process, and that creates a gap between law and reality. When there is a gap between law and reality the public loses confidence and the system becomes vulnerable to abuse. This Bill closes that gap. This Bill introduces a new asylum border procedure. This is one of the most discussed and necessary reforms. The asylum border procedure sets a 12-week time limit for first-instance and appeal decisions in appropriate cases. It applies to applicants from countries with an EU recognition rate of 20% or less, applicants who intentionally mislead authorities, applicants who destroy documents to prevent identity verification or applicants deemed a national security risk. The aim is clear: to issue decisions to the quickest possible time to those less likely to have an entitlement to international protection. That is not unfair; that is common sense. It is aligned with how many EU member states already operate - ending the endless delays. Similarly, the Bill provides for an accelerated examination procedure, with a three-month time limit. This is essential to end the long backlogs that have built up over time. I want to emphasise that speed is not the enemy of fairness. In fact, in many cases, speed is a requirement of fairness because long delays damage applicants, damage communities and damage the credibility of the State. The Bill also establishes a new second instance body, the tribunal for asylum and returns appeals, TARA. This body will replace the existing IPAT for new applications from June 2026 onwards. The Bill also provides for fewer oral hearings in appeals, unless an oral hearing is necessary for a full and fair examination. This is another important reform because oral hearings are resource intensive. They are time-consuming and can contribute to delay but the Bill ensures that fair procedures are maintained. Appeals will still be available, and the appeals officer will still have the power to decide that an oral hearing is necessary. Again, the balance is correct - efficiency without undermining due process. A major strength of this Bill is that it does not simply create faster procedures, it also creates stronger oversight. Part 12 establishes a new, independent monitoring mechanism, through the Office of Chief Inspector of Asylum Border Procedures. This office will monitor compliance with EU and international law, including the EU charter of fundamental rights, during screening and during the border procedure. It will investigate allegations of breaches. That is crucial. If we are going to have faster procedures, we must also have strong, independent safeguards. That is what separates a rules-based, fair system from one that can drift into injustice. I also welcome the provisions relating to age assessments and the involvement of Tusla. The Bill provides for multidisciplinary age assessments where there is doubt as to whether an applicant is a minor. This is a difficult area but it must be dealt with in a structured and lawful way because the stakes are enormous. Children must be protected, and the system must be protected from misuse. The Bill's approach, developed trough engagement between the Department of children and Tusla, is the correct approach. Part 13 provides for the appointment of representatives for unaccompanied minors, with further amendments planned on Committee Stage to clarify which arm of the State will be responsible. I believe this is essential. Vulnerable children cannot be expected to navigate these procedures alone. The Bill also strengthens voluntary return. That matters because voluntary return is often the most practical, cost-effective and humane way to implement return decisions. It provides an incentive. If a person opts for voluntary return and complies fully, the return decision and entry ban can be revoked. That is sensible. It helps achieve the objective of returns without creating unnecessary enforcement costs or confrontation. Restoring credibility and integrity has to be at the core of this Bill. We have to speak honestly about returns. A system without returns is not a functioning asylum system. If a person has exhausted his or her claim and does not quality for protection, the State must be able to implement the decision. Otherwise, the entire system becomes meaningless. The Bill mandates that return decisions be issued alongside negative decisions. It also includes a carve-out to ensure that returns cannot happen where they would be unlawful, including where refoulement risks arise. That is an important safeguard. This is not about breaching international obligations; it is about enforcing them properly. I also welcome the fact that the Minister intends to bring forward on Committee Stage amendments on key areas, including legal counselling, legal advice and legal aid, reception conditions, including accommodation allocation, restrictions of movement, detention and labour market access, representatives for unaccompanied minors, security appeals, data sharing and consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner. This is how legislation should be done. It is not a closed process; it is a serious reform, improved through scrutiny and debate. I want to say this clearly. This Bill does not undermine Ireland's commitment to asylum; it strengthens it. The only way we protect the right to asylum is by ensuring the system is fair, efficient, credible and sustainable. A slow system has no compassion for anybody. A chaotic system is not humane. A system without returns is not a system at all. This Bill is a reset. It streamlines decisions, strengthens screening, creates faster timelines, reforms appeals, improves returns and introduces independent oversight. It protects applicants, communities and the integrity of the State. For those reasons, I support the International Protection Bill 2026 and wish the Minister all the best with the amendments.

Over the past number of years, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed to effectively manage the international protection system. We have seen decisions and appeals taking too long, profiteering from IPAS accommodation providers and a wider loss of confidence from the public that the Government can manage the system. Through this International Protection Bill today, we see that the Government's new strategy on migration is to hand powers over to the EU in the hope that it can avoid blame for its own failures. For an international protection system to work, the public must have confidence that the rules of the system are followed and enforced. This includes all stages in how applications are processed, in granting leave to remain where the case for asylum has been proven, and in enforcing deportations where that is the outcome of the process. Sinn Féin has been clear that migration must be managed in the best interests of the people of Ireland, taking into account our needs in terms of workers for key sectors such as health, capacity of public services and a humanitarian response to those fleeing war and persecution. The Government's decision to sign up to all aspects of the EU asylum and migration pact is not the way to fix the international protection system, nor is it in Ireland's best interest. This sentiment was also reflected in the report from the justice committee's pre-legislative scrutiny of the International Protection Bill. This report recommended that the Government reconsider opting out of the majority of the EU migration and asylum pact. Officials from the Minister's Department acknowledged that they were unsure how much the State will be liable to pay in infringement proceedings for our inability to meet the requirements of the pact. Even the Minister has indicated that a number of amendments will need to be brought forward by him on Committee Stage on many critical aspects of this Bill. It is the case that the Government has decided to plough on with a deeply flawed Bill that will need wholesale changes. This approach is reflective of the wider mismanagement of the international protection system. For example, last year we saw the Comptroller and Auditor General's review into IPAS providers set out the staggering profiteering and cost over-runs that are taking place within the IPAS system. The report outlined evidence of private operators overcharging for the provision of accommodation, including companies charging for beds that were not provided and charging VAT in circumstances where accommodation is exempt from VAT. The focus of the Government should be on ending this abuse of taxpayers' money and getting our own house in order rather than binding ourselves to EU regulations in this area that will make us liable to EU infringement proceedings. There are clear flaws within the International Protection Bill. Many Members across this Chamber have outlined these flaws, yet the Minister continues to push this Bill through. The Government had the option to only enter the aspects of the EU migration pact which made sense for Ireland. However, it has instead decided to sign up to the full pact, against the recommendations of the justice committee. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed for many years to bring order to our international protection system. I fear that this will continue to be the case for the years ahead.

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on the Bill before us today. As I start, I acknowledge that we all speak on important issues like this from a place of bias. Personal experience, our values and our world views all incorporate much of what we say on these issues. I spent a great deal of time as a youth worker working in direct provision settings with children and young people. While I speak about this issue, I am speaking about it with those children and young people in mind, people whom I came to know and care so much about. The first question I will put to the Minister is: why does the principle of the best interest of the child not underpin this Bill? In fact, all the provisions for the best interests of the child in the EU pact have not been transposed into this Bill. Why not? I am happy to give way if the Minister would like to answer that now.

The Minister will have his opportunity to respond.

The Bill has not put any children's rights safeguarding measures in place whatsoever. It does not speak about children first or rights. It speaks of detention in the same breath as talking about the best interests of the child. The Bill legislates for the detention of children. Section 24 specifically relates to the detention of children in the screening procedure. Section 24(10) states that if a parent of a child is not co-operating, the parent will be detained and Tusla will be notified. For what purpose will Tusla be notified? This is not clearly established in the Bill and, from a child protection perspective, merits immediate attention and amendment. Section 24(12) allows for the detention of an unaccompanied minor "in exceptional circumstances and as a measure of last resort". What are these exceptional circumstances? Who decides whether the threshold has reached last resort territory? There is no clarity here and, despite the risk of imposing lifelong harm on children by detaining them, the Bill leaves a breadth of scope that is concerning. Where will children be detained? The Bill might tell us where children will not be detained - in locations such as prisons, detention schools or Garda stations - but it does not tell us where they will be detained. Why not? The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has said that detaining a child is never in their best interests. This Bill allows so much scope for this to occur without knowing who the decision maker is, the destination for such detention, the level of care provided and by whom, and for how long. Who else would be subjected to this? Legal counselling is not defined in this Bill. This is one of the many concerns held by the Children's Rights Alliance. What legal advice and representation will be provided to children and young people seeking international protection? The EU pact sets out the minimum standards for states to have in place but stops short of precluding states from going beyond that, including legal aid. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has said this Bill goes further than what is required in the pact in restricting the rights of applicants but not as far as the pact allows in protecting their rights. I began by highlighting that our words, values, emotions and bias all influence what we say here today. It is all back to our moral compass and mine reminds me very steadfastly that legislating for the detention of children and young people who have done nothing wrong is just downright wrong. To do so in this Bill with so much ambiguity is reprehensible.

The International Protection Bill in its current form represents a profound shift in how the State treats people seeking refuge and asylum in this country. It does so in a way that weakens safeguards, compresses procedures and expands coercive powers without building the healthcare and protection capacity that even the existing system lacks. Human rights' organisations have warned that the Bill risks prioritising speed over fairness, deterrents over protection and administrative convenience over medical and psychological concerns of real significance. What is presented as reform is in fact a model that accelerates decision-making while stripping out the very protections that could make those decisions safe, lawful and humane. This is not about marginal technical defects. It is about whether Ireland is preparing to legislate for a faster system without first ensuring that people who have fled war, torture, trafficking or other forms of persecution can access basic healthcare, trauma-informed assessment and continuity of treatment. On that test, this Bill falls badly short. The Bill significantly expands mandatory medical, vulnerability and fitness assessments but does so in a system that already cannot meet existing need. During pre-legislative scrutiny, the joint committee on justice unanimously adopted a series of recommendations on healthcare provision for international protection applicants. Not one of those recommendations appears in this Bill. They were not debated and rejected; they were simply left out. Safetynet Primary Care, a medical charity providing care to marginalised communities, was the only front-line healthcare provider to give evidence to the committee. In 2024 alone, Safetynet screened more than 1,300 international protection applicants and delivered almost 4,000 GP consultations, so its evidence is grounded in daily clinical reality, not theory. On healthcare after deportation orders, once a deportation order issues, people immediately lose access to their medical card and their right to work. The period before removal can last months or even years and, during that time, people lose access to essential medication, such as insulin, psychiatric medication, epilepsy medication and HIV treatment. Safetynet gave a concrete example of a man diagnosed with schizophrenia who lost access to medication. His psychological state deteriorated severely and he spent four months in inpatient mental health care at a cost of over €100,000. Four months of medication would have cost around €400. Abrupt discontinuation of psychiatric medication is dangerous and can be profoundly destabilising for the person affected, yet this Bill does nothing to prevent scenarios like this. Short-notice transfers routinely interrupt chemotherapy, maternity care, disability supports and specialist treatment. People are moved with little or no notice and there is no certainty that care will continue at the destination. Along with many other omissions, ambiguities and cruelties, the Bill contains no protections for healthcare continuity during transfers - none. The Bill shortens key decision-making timelines to three and six months but provides no additional capacity for the specialist medico-legal reports required for survivors of torture under the Istanbul Protocol. At present, people are already waiting many months and, in some cases, more than a year for these assessments. Under the new accelerated system, it will be virtually impossible for survivors to secure a compliant report before their first-instance decision is made. That creates a real risk of people being wrongly refused protection. On detention, the Bill expands detention powers but includes no enforceable healthcare standards. There is no guarantee of access to mental health professionals, no requirement for trauma-informed care, no assurance of medication continuity and no medical exemption from detention. Ireland still has no national preventive mechanism under the optional protocol to the convention against torture. Detention without healthcare standards is not just bad policy and immoral. There are clear legal pitfalls to this. On vulnerability assessments, the Bill relies heavily on preliminary checks at screening but does not require ongoing or repeat assessments. We know that vulnerability is not static. Trauma, pregnancy, disability and mental health needs often emerge later. Psychological states can change over time. Expert bodies have warned repeatedly that preliminary checks cannot replace proper continuing assessments but the Bill ignores that reality. On fitness to interview, trauma survivors can be prone to dissociation, can avoid disclosure because of fear or shame and can present inconsistently due to their psychological state, yet the Bill does not require that fitness-to-interview decisions be made by clinicians with specialist trauma expertise. That means people can be pushed through interviews they are not psychologically able to participate in, thereby undermining the reliability of the entire process. The Bill creates duties the State is not resourced to meet. It accelerates timelines while hollowing out care. That does not save money; it creates crises, litigation and long-term harm. This is not about adding luxury services to our international protection system. It is about ensuring basic medical and psychological care in a system that already costs over €1 billion a year and still fails people egregiously. If the Government is serious about reform, it should start by reinstating the healthcare provisions the justice committee unanimously agreed on. Leaving them out is not efficiency. It is negligence.

In the late 19th century, a young man left his native east Clare and climbed aboard a ship bound for the United States. When he arrived, he was unvetted and of military age but met no restrictions to his entry. He went on to become a butcher at Macy's in New York city and was naturalised as a citizen in Manhattan in 1899 at the age of 34. A copy of that certificate hangs in my office. That man was my great-grandfather. He returned in the early 1900s and bought and built the farm in Limerick where my father was born and grew up. In this context, I cannot stand here in good conscience and tell the Minister that the restrictive turn he and the Government have taken on immigration is to the benefit of the State, the people who live here or the people who want to come here. This Bill has many shortcomings, many of which we do not even know about. Many of the core tenets and policies of this Bill have not yet been published, which is an extraordinary situation for a Minister for justice to introduce. Such a practice reduces legislative scrutiny and proper accountability by the Oireachtas and is highly concerning. Core policy choices that have been deliberately left out of the Bill as published include family reunification, reception conditions, key detention safeguards and age assessment standards. All were raised in the pre-legislative scrutiny phase and many were in the general scheme. They are now being parked for later amendment. The term "legal counselling" is mentioned in the Bill and is never defined. There is no clarity about who will provide it, what qualifications will be required or what standards will apply. Importantly, if this legal counselling is incorrect, it will be far more difficult to reach the correct decision later. Second Stage of the legislative process in this House is about the principles of the legislation. Committee Stage is not designed to introduce entirely new substantive measures that affect liberty, family life and core access to justice. That means the entire legislative process is being sidelined today in an effort to force backbench Government TDs to approve the principles of a system that affect fundamental rights and liberties and issues of natural justice without seeing the protections that make it lawful. I do not see how any qualified barrister or solicitor in this House could possibly countenance such a vote, without also saying that legal principles, jurisprudence and their constitutional obligations do not matter. That this House, the primary legislative body in the country, which is full of lawyers, would pass a Bill it does not know the principles of, knowing it is likely stripping people coming to this country of their constitutional and natural rights - you could not make it up. This House is being given days to inspect a Bill with few basic definitions, which the Department has had years to create. A Bill that affects fundamental rights without adequate consideration is a level of Executive overreach I thought I would not see in this House and I am gravely concerned by it. Let me clear, if you are an immigrant or not, you will find me and my party in your corner. If you are languishing in emergency accommodation, your childhood bedroom, an extortionate and precarious rental situation or on a hospital trolley or if you are in need of disability care or have been plunged into poverty by this Government and every one preceding it, whether you are an immigrant, your parent is or you have lost count of how many generations were born in this land, you will find an ally in me and my party. Human rights are for all of us. They are a commitment to our shared humanity. They recognise we all get hungry, we all need a warm bed, we all seek to breathe free in a country where we can be our best selves and part of a society that supports and celebrates us. Human rights are sacrosanct. Finally, I raise the case of the family of Ms Oyekanmi who travelled to Ireland from South Africa three years ago with her three children in a well founded belief that she would meet the test for asylum but has now been served with a deportation order. Judging by the numerous emails I have received from our constituents - their neighbours in Dublin Bay South - this family has had a positive impact and their departure will be a significant loss to their community. If indeed the Government believes the asylum process has been operating too slowly, it is only right to acknowledge it by giving that family permission to remain.

The starting point has to be numbers because the political debate has become completely detached from reality. Last year, Ireland granted family reunification to just 669 relatives of people with international protection status. That is the full scale of what we are talking about. These are not people who arrived yesterday or who have bypassed the system. These are people who have already met one of the highest legal bars in the State. They have been formally recognised as refugees after a rigorous process that often takes years. Yet, instead of supporting integration at that point, the Minister is signalling a policy that would deliberately delay family reunification for up to three years, potentially with a layer of additional financial requirements on top. That delay is not neutral. It is not administrative. It is a choice to prolong family separations long after the State has accepted a person cannot safely return home. It is also important to say clearly that this policy does not address any of the real pressures in the system. Preventing a few hundred people from reuniting with close family members does nothing to solve accommodation shortages, reduce processing blockages or improve reception conditions. What it does is target a marginal group of people, precisely because it is small and its members dispersed and it is politically convenient to do so. That is why this feels like performative cruelty rather than a serious migration policy. Family reunification is one of the strongest predictors of successful integration. People who are reunited with their families are more likely to work, settle and participate in their communities and more likely to rebuild their lives after trauma. Prolonged family separation has the opposite effect. It deepens isolation, worsens mental health, delays language acquisition and employment and keeps people in a state of permanent uncertainty. Being separated from one's family has to be utterly hard. From a human perspective, being separated from those you love because the computer says "No" must be absolutely devastating to every element. I am speaking as a mother. Being separated from children because I am in a different country seeking safety, whatever cruelty I would have experienced to get here, is ongoing cruelty after I have arrived. It is also worth stating clearly that many families seeking reunification are children or young people and when siblings or parents are prevented from joining family members here, it is the child who bears the emotional cost. None of this is required by the EU asylum and migration pact. The pact sets minimum standards. It does not oblige Ireland to impose waiting periods, financial thresholds or additional barriers on recognised refugees. This is not about compliance. It is about political signalling and the signal being sent is that, even after the State accepts people as refugees, even after they have proven their case, their right to family life remains conditional and fragile. That approach undermines integration. It undermines trust in the system and undermines Ireland's long-standing commitment to human rights. The Minister should be honest this. If the numbers are small and the impact on the system is negligible, the only remaining explanation is that this policy exists to look tough, rather than to work well. In that case, the right thing to do would be simply to drop it. There is an additional serious consequence, which has received far too little attention, for unaccompanied minors. A three year waiting period effectively operates as a denial of family reunification altogether. Children who arrive in Ireland at 15 or 16 years of age and are recognised as refugees will then be told they must wait for three years before applying to be reunited with their families and will likely age out of the system before the waiting period expires. Once that happens, they will lose access to child specific protections that apply to unaccompanied minors. What was a right attached to childhood becomes a discretionary adult immigration process. In practical terms, it means a child could do everything right by engaging with the system and complying with every requirement and still be permanently prevented from being reunited with parents or siblings because of an arbitrary waiting period. That is not an unintended side effect. It is a foreseeable outcome of the proposed policy. A policy that operates in this way will not only delay family life for children; it will deny it altogether. If we are serious about protecting children, we cannot design a system where the clock will be used to quietly strip them of their rights.

The Minister will know the views of Sinn Féin about this legislation, as articulated by our spokesperson, Deputy Carthy. We are particularly concerned that Tusla and the various Departments under the Government's direction do not have the resources to meet the requirements laid out. That is the fundamental concern. However, I will talk practically about my experience in Donegal in recent years and the mistakes made by those who came before the Minister. There was always a challenge with asylum seekers and the direct provision system, with people languishing for years. I previously chaired the petitions committee and we were asked by the children's ombudsman and the Ombudsman to look at the need for their oversight of the direct provision system. We visited direct provision centres across the State. We met asylum seekers. The length of time they were waiting for a decision and languishing in these centres was unacceptable. I am glad to say that the Ombudsman for Children had oversight after that, as did the Ombudsman. I am sorry that the Ombudsman for Children does not have oversight, as I understand it, of the temporary emergency centres dotted across the State, including in my county. I will talk directly about our experience. What we have seen is that there is the challenge of supporting Ukrainian refugees, which people all across County Donegal did. What then emerged was the challenge of a large upsurge in asylum seekers coming to Ireland. It appears that the approach of the previous Government to that was that wherever there was a hotel that was not doing too well commercially or wherever there were opportunistic developers who could locate empty buildings or who maybe had buildings of their own, it was in these places that asylum seekers were located. There was no thought about where the most fitting communities, best health facilities, best primary care and best education facilities were. None of that was taken into consideration. It was utterly unfair to the asylum seekers involved and to the communities that were expected to host them. Indeed, public representatives were learning about it after the fact. The bus would come in, the asylum seekers would be located and then we would be informed that a contract had been signed. It was absolutely appalling, and it happened again and again. In Donegal, we are dealing with our own humanitarian crisis relating to defective concrete blocks, which has affected thousands of private and public houses, commercial buildings, public buildings, schools and crèches. All of these places are falling apart and we have reached the point where we cannot provide housing for the families in the country who have to be relocated. No consideration whatsoever was given to that. Wherever a hotel or a building was available, that was where asylum seekers were located. That was completely unfair and unjust. They would be stuck in the middle of nowhere sometimes, with no resources, no supports, nothing whatsoever. That had been the Government's strategy for the past number of years. When people reacted angrily to that in communities, it was totally unfair to say that they are racist and unreasonable. That was not what was happening. We were watching people becoming millionaires. In some instances, these were individuals whose businesses had failed and who were bankrupt. They suddenly became millionaires overnight. People can see it. That is the injustice and context. I want the Minister to hear that from Donegal. The previous Government got it badly wrong. Do not repeat the mistakes it made.

This Bill has been introduced n line with the trend that we are seeing internationally where there has been an attack on the rights of migrants, immigrants of all kinds and, in particular, asylum seekers and refugees. Last year, 4,700 deportation orders were issued by this State, which was an increase of 96% on the previous year. The number almost doubled. TDs from many different parties in here jumping up and down about deportations last year. Fifty of those deportation orders were for people from Palestine and Sudan, which we all know are areas where massive genocides are taking place. Since entering office, the Minister has employed this tough man image whereby he will virtue signal to people on the far right or people who have racist views that he is getting tough on immigration, including with his chartered flights and now with this Bill. That is part of a wider fear-mongering campaign that is being undertaken by the Government and that has a significant effect on the consciousness of people. The ESRI has found that people overestimate the foreign-born population and severely overestimate the number of asylum seekers here. They also underestimate the number of immigrants coming here for work by a shocking 30%. This means that when people see someone of colour or from a migrant background, they assume they are not legal or are either an asylum seeker or refugee. That is borne out by research the ESRI has done. This is the State's attempt to blame a small minority of refugees for things like the housing crisis. Recently, the Tánaiste, Deputy Simon Harris, stated it much more vocally and publicly than would have been the case heretofore when he made a comment to the effect that a significant number of people in emergency accommodation have no right to housing in this country. I would not call it a dog whistle, because it was fairly blatant. Asylum seekers generally are abhorrently treated. Four hundred refugees were told in December that there was no accommodation for them, and they were basically forced to live on the streets in a climate where racism and hostility are rife and in circumstances where the far right in this country is growing. Immigrants in general, people who have migrated into this country who are working here, are also badly treated in the sense that they show up disproportionately in the homeless figures or are at risk of poverty compared with Irish people. I see that in my constituency, where many of those being evicted are migrants, people who have been working and living here for a long time but who do not have the same support systems and are stuck in the private rented sector. This Bill is meant to clamp down on asylum seeking. It has been introduced when the number of asylum seekers decreased hugely from 2024 to 2025. There were only 669 successful requests for family reunification in 2025. That is less than 1% of all immigration. The key things to highlight in this Bill that are really dangerous, at a time when the case of an Irish person being held in an ICE detention centre has been highlighted, which is obviously horrific, is that our Government is moving in a similar direction. We have not set up ICE detention centres and we have not got ICE on the street, but there are some trends emerging. For example, under this Bill, people making applications for asylum will need to show up to so-called screening centres where their applications will be screened. They will fill out the forms there and so on. Failure to do so under this Bill will allow gardaí to arrest and detain them. Refugees could be imprisoned and detained for not showing up. They might not know that they were supposed to show up. There could be all sorts of reasons for them not showing up. This is similar to what is happening in the US. They can also be detained if there is a fear that they will abscond after a decision against them staying in the country being made, and they can be detained without a warrant too. Sections of this Bill allow gardaí to search a person without a warrant and to detain them. This power also applies to children, which is the most horrific part of it, where the gardaí believe they need to determine their identity. As a result, we could see children being detained. We have also seen children who may have been born in Ireland being deported. Third parties will not be allowed to interfere in the duties of the officers undertaking these acts. If, therefore, people are taken away - and as we have seen in the US - nobody can inquire about them or go to assist them. The Bill limits the power of applicants to appeal decisions. There is a limit of a week to put in an appeal and there are no more guaranteed oral hearings. It will be up to the tribunal. It has been noted that age assessment under the Bill is not defined or explicitly laid out. This leads to much ambiguity about how assessments should be undertaken. The Minister is being given a wide range of powers. In the International Protection Act 2015, the chief international protection officer is independent in the performance of his or her functions. In the Bill, the equivalent of the international protection officer is simply the determining authority, which is defined as the Minister. The Minister can decide if an NGO can give information to an applicant, can direct the appeals body to prioritise an appeal and can remove the chief inspector if this is deemed to be in the interests of the Government or national security. The Bill will also include provisions to prevent those given refugee status from applying for family reunification for three years. This Bill has been heavily criticised by multiple NGOs. They have noted that it gives huge powers to gardaí to detain people, including the ability to arrest those who have been given deportation orders by the State, without a warrant. This Bill is meant, in no uncertain terms, to give the Garda and the State extra powers around immigration similar to those being used in the US. It treats all people, including children, exercising their right to seek asylum with suspicion.

This Bill involves an erosion of migrants' rights and a shift towards deterrence. It is rushed legislation that is deeply flawed. We are being told by the Government that there is going to be a raft of amendments. As a result, we cannot scrutinise the Bill properly. The Bill leans towards the far right and racist lobby that is opposed to all migration, be it legal or illegal or whether it relates to IPAS centres, students with education visas or workers with employment permits. Those in question are on record on this issue. Key equality safeguards are either unclear or are absent from the Bill. It does not define what is meant by legal counselling or clarify who will provide that counselling. Neither is it clear if international protection applicants are going to be entitled to legal advice and representation at all stages of the process. For instance, can legal counselling be provided by non-legal professionals? Surely not. The suggestion about group counselling is neither practical nor legal. The key question is whether there will be legal advice for individuals. Who will conduct the assessments and what qualifications will they have? What does the phrase "suitable medical means of assessing age" mean and how effective and independent will the independent monitoring mechanism be? It appears that the Government may remove the chief inspector "in the best interests of the State ". That is very broad and, I would suggest, open to abuse. I refer in particular to the question of family reunification. We all need our families around us. Everyone who comes to live and work in Ireland deserves to have their family with them. However, thousands of people are being forced to live apart from their families for years on end. The new Government policy in this regard makes the situation even worse. People who come to Ireland to work are doing essential jobs such as: looking after older people; picking, packing and cooking food; working in hospitality services; driving buses; building houses; working as nurses and doctors; and staffing our hospitals. They have been recruited to work here because we cannot fill those positions ourselves. These people are being denied their basic right to have their family with them because they do not earn enough money or because of the types of jobs they have. Relationships are being torn apart, families are missing milestones, people are missing out on being parents and children are missing out on having their parents for support and guidance. Research shows that long-term delays in family reunion impact negatively on a series of issues like wages, education and language acquisition and can lead to long-term household poverty. The OECD's International Migration Outlook 2019 had a focus on the impact of family reunion on integration. It reported that spouses who arrive with some delay earn significantly lower wages after ten or more years in the host country. This report also outlines the negative effect of the absence of a spouse or partner on health and well-being. The integration of migrant children also depends on how quickly they can join their family. Outcomes are strongly affected by long delays. The same OECD report highlights that children of preschool age have better outcomes as adults than children who arrive at school age. It is, therefore, imperative that we move away from short-term thinking and ensure that family reunification takes place. Family reunification should be available immediately, particularly in cases where the individual is resident in Ireland on full-time basis, is in employment and is paying their taxes. This is a very important issue that goes to the core of the whole situation where we have significant numbers of non-Irish workers working in our services.

Donald Trump is scapegoating people such as asylum seekers and migrants to deflect anger away from the failure of people like him and the billionaires he represents to address the cost-of-living crisis. He is scapegoating vulnerable immigrants, people seeking asylum or those who are undocumented, including Irish people, in the most horrendous way. We have seen the consequences of that now with Seamus Culleton being treated in what he described as a modern-day concentration camp. That is what Trump is about. This Government is leaning into that stuff. What it is doing is not as absolutely blatant and obscene as what he is doing, but it is leaning into it and the human consequences are appalling, just as they are for Seamus Culleton. The latter is working in the United States. He was not documented, so he probably did not have everything that was necessary for him to be deemed fully legal. However, he is contributing and wants to continue to contribute to American society. We are all rightly appalled that he should be treated in this way because we understand that he is going to contribute in the same way that as millions of other Irish people who have to the countries all over the world to which they have migrated. People then say that too many of these people are coming to Ireland. The hypocrisy and double standards are appalling, and the human consequences are terrible. I raised the case of Bilal Butt here earlier this year. Bilal has been living and working here. He has two children who were born here and who have lived here all their lives. He was locked up for 50 days pending deportation. This is a man who is contributing to our society. There is no value for him or his children in deporting him. I warned at the time his case arose that his health was in danger. I have written to the Minister, who sitting there looking at his phone, three times about Bilal.

I am taking a note of what the Deputy is saying.

I have still not received a response to the communications I sent to him about Bilal. His family were worried that he was going to have a heart attack. He did have a heart attack and was in ICU. Thankfully, he is out of prison. This is a man who is working. His employer wants him to continue to work. He is contributing. There is nothing good about deporting him or deporting another family I have also been asked to mention. Deputy Bacik mentioned them earlier. This is the family of Titilayo Oluwakemi Oyekanmi and her three sons Samuel, Joseph and Genesis. She was training as a healthcare worker, had a QQI level 5 in healthcare and hoped to work as a care assistant. One of her sons was just about to do his leaving certificate. They have been packed up to be deported and thrown out of the country. This is just brutal stuff; it echoes what Trump is doing. It leans into all that stuff. We heard statements from the former Minister of Finance. who left to join the World Bank, to the effect that there are too many immigrants in Ireland and so on. That is just leaning into both the stuff to which I refer and the toxic agenda of the far right. The truth about immigrants coming to this country is that the number of asylum applicants is tiny. It was down to 13,000 last year and 18,000 the year before. It is a tiny proportion of the number of people coming into the country in the first place, which was 149,000 in 2024. It is a very small number. Michael Taffe, in a very good article I would encourage people to read on the perverse logic of the Government’s immigration policy, details how every serious study that has been done anywhere in the world shows that the benefits of inward immigration far outweigh the negatives in any country, as was the case with the Irish going abroad. This is true here and it is true everywhere. The economic benefit of people coming into a country is multiples of any of the costs involved. This should be obvious when we look at the contribution immigrants to this country are making to our health services, construction, hospitality and to retail. This country would not be able to function without immigrants. We are facing labour and skills shortages in every single area of Irish society and these are people who want to contribute to our society. We have Government bodies saying how the ageing population in this country and lack of young people is becoming a massive problem because the working population is declining as a proportion of the overall population, and I am on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight which is studying this. We are getting older so we need immigrants in order to sustain the working population to be able to pay for pensions and all of the other things we need. It makes no sense to be leaning into this stuff and suggesting that immigrants or asylum seekers are somehow causing a problem. This is a Government essentially trying to deflect attention away from its failure to address the housing crisis or indeed its culpability for that crisis in the first place. When we look at the numbers, we have 149,000 in inward immigration. As I said, there were 13,000 applications for asylum. Do Members know how many tourists came here in 2024? There were 6 million. Is anybody running around saying we have to stop the tourists coming in because they are such a problem? No, because we all recognise they bring economic benefits even if they also rely on the infrastructure and so on. That exact argument applies to a far smaller number of people seeking asylum or to immigrants coming into this country. We should stop the scapegoating and leaning into the far right and the toxic politics of Trump.

This Bill is designed to legislate for Ireland’s decision to sign up to the EU migration and asylum pact. We all know every country requires a functioning international protection system that is rules-based, fair, efficient and enforced. We are all very aware of the problems in the international protection system in Ireland, and the EU migration pact does nothing to support or take into account Ireland’s unique position as an EU member state that is part of the common travel area with a state outside of the EU. Communities are up in arms when it comes to the lack of information on where an IPAS centre is going to be located. The Government’s community engagement team allows misinformation, disinformation and concerns to grow within good communities. The Government gave a welcome commitment not to use the only hotel in a town. When these hotels are used for accommodation, it takes away local employment. These hotels are the only available accommodation in areas, which makes them important for local tourism in communities, as they support local restaurants, factories which have investors visiting, small shops and businesses. I welcome the previous commitment given to not use the only hotel in Oldcastle, a commitment I got on a number of occasions from the Minister and his Department. I thank him for his engagement on that. I understand that implementing the comprehensive accommodation strategy for international protection applicants is ongoing. However, loopholes that the Government and IPAS accommodation providers may use need to be looked at to protect the only hotel in towns and villages across Ireland. When loopholes are used, it creates uncertainty in communities. IPAS accommodation providers are making millions off the State by using these loopholes. Section 5 has been used to seek planning exemption for IPAS accommodation. These planning exemptions should be scrapped. Instead, there should be maximum engagement with communities to stop misinformation and fear being spread in good communities with good people. Sinn Féin has been clear from the outset that signing up to the EU asylum and migration pact is not in Ireland’s interest. This move undermines Ireland’s sovereignty and hands over more power to the EU to make unsustainable decisions for Ireland. Offers of accommodation should not be decided without consultation with communities and elected representatives and in areas with no services, GPs, school places, etc. Very often we see the concerns of communities disregarded and that should not be the case. Massive profiteering continues and the decision by Government to sign up to the EU migration and asylum pact in its entirety is a mistake. Our position in Sinn Féin is clear. We recognise the contributions of many who come here but also recognise the challenges that communities face with public services and housing. Very good points were raised by our Sinn Féin Deputies during the pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill. Profiteering in the provision of accommodation must be ended. Accommodation providers have abused the system in place. They have proceeded with works on sites without relevant permissions and contracts, leading to local authorities having to put huge resources into enforcement proceedings, which is often hindered as they are getting conflicting information from the potential accommodation provider and Government Departments. I cannot understand why the Government is so determined to sign up to the pact and then face fines for not meeting targets that we all know it is going to miss, as the target set out by the EU in the pact are unsustainable. If the Government plans to move towards State-led accommodation, this Bill in its current format will put a strain on Ireland’s capabilities to do that.

Aontú believes that we, as a people, should do our best to try to provide help to those who are fleeing war and violence. We believe there are many people in Ireland who are migrants who are making a valuable contribution to our country and our society. They are essential in many sectors and this country would not function properly only for those individuals. We also believe that when a person is here legally, they should be treated with respect, and that the colour of a person's skin is of no more significance than the colour of their eyes. Six years ago we in Aontú called for a respectful conversation about the issue of immigration in this country. We were slammed by every single other political party in the Dáil at the time. Every party accused us of damaging the cohesion of the country. We stated that if we do not have a respectful conversation in this country, the conversation is not going to disappear. It will simply get pushed underground to the ne'er-do-wells who will use people's concerns for their own negative benefit. That is exactly what has happened over the past six years. The inability of the political establishment to reflect the concerns of Irish citizens across the country has pushed hundreds of thousands of individuals into the ecosystem of some of the most extreme people in Irish society. This was a major mistake by this Government. As it happens, we have seen that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have flipped on this issue in the past couple of years. I welcome that. Sinn Féin flipped in large part because it was run from the doors in its working class heartlands across this country on this particular issue. However, there are still four other political parties in this Chamber who do not think we even have the right to have a debate. With People Before Profit, any individual action taken by the Minister to ameliorate some of the difficulties here led to name calling, association with Trump, and looking to show this individual as an extreme individual. Do not shut down democratic debate. It was incredible that for four years the vast majority of people in all polling companies' polls were saying they wanted a stricter immigration system, and one political party, the smallest in Leinster House, Aontú, was the only one actually articulating that view. That is quite an incredible situation to happen. There is a political bubble where people are not able to listen to the people they are meant to represent and who are caught up in a peer pressure in which they do not have the backbone to be able to speak with their own intellect and moral compasses. Look at what happened over that period of time. I put in a parliamentary question to the previous Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, approximately four years ago, asking where most people were registering for asylum in this country. That parliamentary question showed 85% registered at the International Protection Office in Mount Street. I scratched my head wondering why people were registering for asylum in Mount Street when they were coming through ports and airports. When I went back to the Minister, Deputy McEntee, at the time and asked where the people applying for asylum in Mount Street were coming from, she said she did not know. It is incredible that an individual who was being well paid - €180,000 a year - to do a job did not even have the curiosity to find out where people applying for asylum in Ireland were coming from. Six months later, I asked again where people were coming from and whether the Minister was asking the question as to where they are coming from. She said they were not asking them where they were coming from. That is an incredible situation. Six months later, I put in another question. The Minister admitted then that she was asking the question but at that stage, she said the information was not being collated in a fashion that would enable her to give us that information. It took three years of questioning for the Minister, Deputy McEntee, to admit that 85% of the population coming into the country were coming from Britain through the North of Ireland. It is an incredible situation. The EU migration pact, which we are discussing today, does not fix that problem. A person can fly from Liverpool into Belfast currently without a passport and without seeking asylum. There is obviously never going to be a border between North and South. It is impossible, it is not wanted and it would not be able to function. The logical conclusion is to put in an Irish Sea border for the movement of people. People said the unionists would not accept it. Unionists have accepted an Irish Sea border for the movement of goods. They were forced to do so under the Windsor Framework. Our engagement with British politicians has highlighted to them that there is a flow of migrants from the South into the North and Britain. It is in London's and Ireland's best interests, as good neighbours, to have a good fence to be able to understand where people are moving. If people want to come from Britain to Ireland, North or South, they should apply for asylum at the airport or port they land at on the island of Ireland. It is the only way to manage the movement of people in Ireland. I submitted parliamentary questions asking how many people were coming to Ireland without passports or travel documents. The Government stated that in 2023, 5,000 people landed in Dublin Airport without a passport or travel document. That is an incredible situation. People who had to get on a flight in another European country simply did not have their document available when they landed. I asked how many people were being deported and was informed that only about 5% of the individuals subject to deportation orders had their deportations enforced. I asked how many were deported in another fashion and the Minister said that some of those people were being deported voluntarily. When I asked how many the Minister was sure had left, she said she did not know and that there were no exit checks. We do not check if people leave the country or not. I asked the Minister why there are no exit checks and she said it is because we have a Border with the North of Ireland. We cannot have exit checks in Ireland if we have an open Border between North and South. We asked how many people were failing in the application process. At that time, about 30% of people were failing their first application. We realised there was something wrong and the Government was not being strict enough with regard to its tests for those applications. We were proved right because 80% of people who apply are now failing their first application. There has been a massive jump from about 30% to 80% in two or three years. What happened? Was it the case that we had a different cohort of people coming to this country or was it that the Government was simply not testing properly in relation to the people coming into the country three or four years ago? Is it the case that the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, is testing properly, and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, was not? We had a situation where tens of thousands of people were coming into the country and spending years having their applications processed. We had to pay for their accommodation. Some 80% of those applications were going to fail, but we can take that figure down to 60% because some of those who appeal have the initial failure overturned. Some 60% of the people who spent years in accommodation in Ireland were not asylum seekers but we were paying €1.2 billion for their accommodation. That is an incredible situation for any Government to allow over that period of time. The Government sent out a message that if you come to Ireland, you can apply and it will take years for your application to be processed. If your application fails, you can apply for appeal and it will take years for your appeal to be processed. If you fail the appeal, you can get a judicial review, and it will take years for your judicial review to be processed. If you fail at the judicial review, you get a deportation order, which will never be implemented. This incredible and dysfunctional situation created by the Government costs billions of euro, creates turmoil across the country and nobody is ever held to account for it. We have had a significant increase in the number of people coming into the country claiming asylum. The figure has been in or around 18,000 per year for many years. In terms of work permits, the figure is about 40,000 per year and in terms of student visas, there are about 60,000 people coming in every year. There is also a significant number of people coming in from Ukraine. If you increase the population of the country by the population of Galway city on an annual basis and you do not build the infrastructure of Galway city on an annual basis, you are going to create problems. Galway has a university, a university hospital, dozens of schools and tens of thousands of houses. If you do not keep up with that population increase in terms of infrastructure, you are going to create stresses and strains, albeit not among middle-class and wealthy people who will be able to provide for themselves. The people who will compete for the scarce resources will typically be the working-class people across the country. That is why the stresses and strains of the Government's policies have mostly been seen in working-class places over the past while. It is important that I say this. The Government is responsible for the housing crisis, without a shadow of a doubt. There is nobody else responsible for it. However, if you restrict and have a static supply of houses and raise the demand at the same time, you will increase the price of houses and rents and make houses less available to people. It is maths, economics and physics. You cannot hold supply static, raise demand and expect there to be houses for everybody and house prices or rents to remain low. In regard to IPAS, that situation is an incredible one. The Government set fires in many towns and villages in the country. It would not even talk to local communities. There were communities with hotels in one part of the town and another hotel in another part of the town. The Government took one without talking to the community, which would have been happy if the Government had gone for the other. That created stresses and strains and significantly reduced the tourist market. In some counties, 10% of all hotel beds were taken up by IPAS. This approach made millionaires of people, cost €1.2 billion on an annual basis and got rid of planning. If I want to build a little house for my granny at the back of my house so she can live safely beside me, I have to go through planning. Why is planning good? It makes sure the local authority applies the law and it gives local people an influence over the development of society. The Government deleted planning. Aontú will bring a planning Bill to the Dáil next week, which will seek to reintroduce planning for IPAS in the future. Another issue is that the Government does not know the identity of everybody coming into the country. It is important to say that. The Government gives the impression that it does know but it does not. I know of numerous examples of the Government putting adults into Tusla accommodation for children. Whereas Garda vetting is needed to place an adult near a child, the Government has put adults into Tusla accommodation for children. We have also seen in recent court cases that some asylum seekers have presented with multiple and often contradictory identities. Some have different names, dates of birth and countries of origin. Where laws have existed, the Government has not implemented them. The Minister has the right to reduce migrants, even European migrants, if they break the law and are criminals. Answers to parliamentary questions I submitted show there has been a static low number of criminals removed from this country over the past number of years. There has been a little change from the Minister recently, which I welcome, but for most of those five years, that figure was static. The Minister also has the right to remove people who are not earning a living here. If people who come here have never had a job, he can remove them and send them back to another European country. That has not been done, in the main. There are hundreds of examples of European citizens living in Ireland who are dependent on social welfare and not earning a living, and Jozef Puška was a prime example of that. He did not work in this country from 2017 until the year he murdered Ashling Murphy. There has been a big change in Ireland. According to the 2022 census, 20% of the population, or 1 million people, were born outside of this country. That is a significant number. We are moving now to having 25% - we are at just under 25% - of the population of the State born outside of the country. Nobody ever speaks about that fact. It is a very high figure and it will make it difficult to have a sustainable society into the future. The European average is 13.9%, in the US it is 15% and in Britain it is 16%. We are at around 23% at the moment. This is a radical change. A Labour Party representative spoke positively in the Chamber about the contribution migrants make in Ireland. Nobody is arguing that fact. There is not one person in the country who does not say there are hundreds of thousands of migrants who are contributing with value to our society. That is an effort to frame this discussion in a way that nobody else is framing it. It is an effort to frame it as people being either pro-migration or anti-migration. That is not the discussion that is happening in households across the country. People are talking about the volume, the rate and the numbers in respect of this issue. It is important that people understand that. We have many migrants in our party, Aontú. We put many of them up for election and many of them have said they disagree with the Government's policies over the last while. They want restrictions on the numbers of people who come into the country. They want that figure to be lowered and I think they are right. We have to lower those figures if we are going to have a sustainable situation in this country into the future. It was mentioned that we need these workers, and we do, but we also need to look at what is happening with the birth rate. In 2009, there were 75,000 births here. Last year, there were 55,000 births. If this trend continues, we are all going to be working until we are 85 and pensions are going to be reduced. There will be no balance in the demographics to be able to fund society in the future. We will have to work on that issue at some stage. The European migration pact outsources key decisions to Brussels. It reduces the ability to take sovereign democratic decisions in Ireland. It locks us into policies and decisions that will be made by other countries in their interests. It is a massive transfer of sovereignty. We do not know what the future holds but if we can self-determine, at least we can control the costs and the numbers in future. If we hand away sovereignty, decisions will be made in Brussels and we will not be able to determine our future contributions in relation to this matter. A question came up during an earlier debate on the Bill, which the Minister may be able to answer. Will the Council of Europe be able to change the parameters of the EU migration pact in future? Will decisions on the numbers that countries should take and contributions they will have to make in future be taken by the Council of Europe on the basis of a qualified majority vote? If so, we are stuffed because that is a blank cheque. We know exactly what it means if we hand over to the European Union the power to fine Ireland. Look at the situation with greenhouse gases. We are hurtling towards binding 2030 targets for emissions, with hundreds of millions of euro of fines. We handed over qualified majority voting on the Mercosur deal and a decision on our beef industry was taken on the basis of German, French and Italian interests. This is another example showing that when you hand over power from this House to Brussels, decisions are not always made in our best interests. The Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, has said that he does not believe in the old-fashioned idea of sovereignty. The current Fianna Fáil leadership is millions of miles away from the revolutionary generation of Fianna Fáilers who fought for independence in this country. There are major costs wrapped up in what we are looking at. None of the positive elements of the EU migration pact could have been entered into voluntarily by us without signing up for the pact as a whole. There is nothing about the timelines, the numbers or the reforms the Minister is making that could not have been achieved based on the democratic will of this country and without having to hand away sovereignty. Let us remember that, nine times out of ten, the decision you will make for yourself will be better than the decision your neighbour will make for you. The same applies to countries. We still have a generation that is suffering from the massive cost of the banking bailout, when 1% of the European population was made to pay 44% of the cost of the banking bailout because Europe worked in its best interest and against our interests. Aontú will oppose the Bill and push back against it. We will look for a migration system in this country that is compassionate and fair but is far stricter than what we have seen so far.

Signing up to the EU asylum and migration pact is not in Ireland's interest. What the Government is essentially doing is handing over control of decisions on migration to the European Union. Sinn Féin has always been of the opinion that Ireland, not Europe, should be the one that makes decisions on these important issues. That is why we oppose the majority of measures in this pact. The reality is that our asylum and international protection system has been a complete and utter mess for decades. We have seen families left waiting in limbo for years for their applications to be processed. This is totally unfair, especially on children. We need a fair system in which rules are applied equally and those applying for asylum and local communities are treated with respect. To address our IPAS system, I represent Dublin Bay North where the former Crown Paints site in Coolock was to be used for IPAS accommodation. Coolock is an area that has been ignored by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments for decades. An abandoned paint factory in a community abandoned by Government is not a suitable place for an IPAS centre. The only reason it was considered was that private interests saw an opportunity to make a quick profit out of it. The planning exemption for IPAS centres needs to be ended and we need to see proper engagement with our communities. As a TD for the area, I can tell the Minister that trying to get answers from the Department on what was happening with Crown Paints was like trying to get blood out of a stone. There was one meeting of elected representatives at which many concerns were raised. There were promises of more meetings but those meetings never happened. If we, as local representatives, were frustrated trying to get answers, just imagine how that wider community felt. My party president, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, met residents' groups, community groups and local clubs on the situation. She addressed the then Taoiseach and called for respectful dialogue and engagement with our community. That did not happen. The community of Coolock is getting on with it now but this Government needs to learn lessons from how the situation in Coolock was handled. We need a proper strategy for the location of these centres and for the integration of those who seek refuge here. We need to end the ability of private companies to make millions in profits off the back of Ireland’s shambles of an asylum system.