2026-01-28

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I am very pleased to introduce the International Protection Bill 2026 to the House. Migration has been a distinctive feature of Ireland’s history. Few countries in Europe have been as affected by emigration over the past two centuries as Ireland, with millions having left in search of safe haven, economic prosperity and opportunities not afforded to them at home. In recent years, we have become a country that is able to provide the opportunities those who emigrated once sought. We are a safe and successful country with a vibrant economy, which has meant that people from across the globe want to come to Ireland in search of a better life. Over the years, we have seen the invaluable contribution that foreign-born workers have made in Ireland. These include workers in our healthcare system, hospitality industry, construction sector and tech industry. Each of these sectors has benefited from, and relies on, the excellent work provided by migrants who have come to Ireland to work. This Government is very clear about the value of migration to Ireland. The vast majority of people coming to Ireland are here to work or study. This Government also fundamentally believes in the right to claim asylum. We will always uphold our obligation on this important principle of international law for the sake of those who need our protection. At the same time, migration and asylum have given rise to challenges not only for Ireland, but across the EU. Migration and asylum are shared challenges that are increasingly difficult for any one country to deal with acting alone in a globalised and interdependent world. In 2025, my Department received approximately 13,000 applications for international protection. Although this is down 30% from the 2024 figure of 18,500, it is clear that issues will arise when attempting to deal with large numbers of international protection applicants in a system that was not designed to handle such demand. Decisions have historically taken far too long. This situation benefits no one. It does not serve applicants who are granted international protection, who face challenges in integrating into Irish society due to these delays; it does not benefit the State to have increasingly high demands placed on an already stretched accommodation system; and it undermines public confidence in the systems and agencies designed to provide effective protection to those who need it. The challenges we currently face in providing an asylum system that is fit for purpose are shared by other EU member states. The overall objective of the migration and asylum pact is to provide a fair, sustainable and efficient asylum procedure. This will be achieved through convergence in asylum practices across the EU. It is for these reasons that I am introducing the International Protection Bill 2026. This Bill delivers on the programme for Government commitment to implement the regulations and directives agreed by the EU by 12 June 2026. This Bill represents the most significant reform of Irish asylum laws in the history of the State. It will put in place a new framework to manage migration and asylum for the long term. It will improve decision-making structures within the international protection system and provide faster timelines for the processing of international protection applications. The overall objective of the Bill is to provide a fair, sustainable and efficient asylum procedure that is consistent with how asylum laws operate across the EU. In that context, I would like to address the recommendation of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, which is chaired by Deputy Carthy and of which Deputy Gannon is a member, in its pre-legislative scrutiny report that opting out of the majority of the EU migration and asylum pact be reconsidered. The pact and the Bill introduce faster processing of asylum claims with a much more efficient decision-making system. Faster processing will mean that applicants spend less time in International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS, centres and will significantly reduce the cost of the asylum system to the State. Faster decision-making will also mean that successful applicants will be granted international protection sooner and those whose applications are refused can be returned to their country of origin sooner. Having a common system across the EU makes sure that all applicants are treated the same in every member state, with no incentive to move from one to another. If Ireland had not opted in to the pact, it is likely that we would face higher levels of secondary movement, slower processing and a less efficient returns system. This would result in applicants staying in the system for much longer, at much greater cost to the State in terms of the provision of accommodation and other supports. If Members say that we should not have opted in to the regulations and directives associated with the EU migration pact, they should then recognise there is still an ability for them to put into this Bill what they say they would like to see in it. I am conscious that Deputy Carthy will, I suspect, say that he would not have opted in to the pact. That may very well be the position of Sinn Féin but there is an obligation on Deputy Carthy and Sinn Féin to state what measures they would like to see in this legislation that are not in it at present. We can just ignore the pact and decide what Members want to put into the Bill that is not in it at present. That is something that would focus minds on whether or not this is the best method of reforming the asylum process, and I believe it is. It is for all these reasons that the Government and both Houses of the Oireachtas have given approval in accordance with the Constitution for Ireland to opt in to these measures. The proposal to opt-in was debated at length in the Houses before the opt-in motions were approved. It is difficult, therefore, to understand how the joint committee made the recommendation it did. I should add that it would not be legally possible to seek to opt out even if that was the democratic wish of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Exactly.

Because there was a democratic vote by the Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas, which I presume the Deputies accept.

It means that the Government is locked in with a ratchet.

In preparation for the commencement of the Act, my Department has already begun to operate elements of the new asylum border procedure and to transition gradually to fully implementing the provisions that will be set out in this legislation. This transition is being undertaken within the framework of the existing legislation, which is the International Protection Act 2015. To begin this transition, new readiness teams were established in June 2025. Operations began in Citywest reception centre in July 2025, in partnership with the International Protection Office, IPO, the International Protection Appeals Tribunal, IPAT, the International Protection Accommodation Service and the immigration service delivery’s repatriation team. This phased approach has enabled my Department to test the ability of the international protection system in its entirety to process cases within the required timeframe of the future asylum border procedure and to make adjustments where necessary. This work has allowed my Department to identify pressure points and practical challenges across the process, to create new standard operating procedures and to set out future training needs. I will now turn to the detail of the Bill. The Bill is divided into 15 Parts which I will briefly outline. Part 1 deals with preliminary matters. Chapter 2 provides that the Minister for justice is the designated determining authority for the purposes of the pact measures to determine whether a person qualifies as a refugee or is eligible for subsidiary protection. Chapter 2 provides for the application of the concepts of first country of asylum and safe third country. Part 2 of the Bill sets out matters relating to the taking of biometric data and the screening of applicants for international protection. Chapter 1 provides for the taking and transmission of data to Eurodac as well as the management of this data. Chapter 2 ensures appropriate alignment with the screening regulation. Persons applying for international protection will undergo screening. Chapter 2 provides for the designation of screening centres, the screening process and preliminary health and vulnerability checks. Part 3 provides for the procedures that will apply where a person applies for international protection. Chapter 1 provides for the making, registration and lodgement of applications for international protection. Chapter 2 makes provision for the appointment of representatives and provisional representatives for unaccompanied minors. Chapter 3 outlines the assessment process for determining the age of an applicant. The new age assessment process will meet the requirements of the asylum procedures regulation and will involve a multi-disciplinary assessment. Chapter 4 provides for an applicant's right to remain in the State while his or her application is being examined and the limitations and exceptions attached to the right to remain. Chapter 4 also provides for the international protection applicant card. Chapter 5 makes provision for explicit and implicit withdrawal of applications. Chapter 6 provides for subsequent applications. Part 4 implements provisions of the asylum and migration management regulation relating to the determination of the member state responsible for examining an international protection application. Part 4 provides for the determination of the member state responsible for examining an application. Provision is made for matters relating to transfer decisions. Part 4 sets out the procedures that will apply when Ireland is the member state responsible for examining an application. The new responsibility provisions replace the Dublin III regulation. Part 5 deals with the examination of international protection applications. Chapter 1 provides for the use of a medical examination for indications of past persecution or serious harm. Chapter 2 provides for the examination and, where necessary, the prioritisation of applications for international protection. Chapter 3 stipulates the requirements for interviews of applicants. Chapter 4 outlines the different decisions that can be made in relation to applications and sets out arrangements for the granting of refugee status or subsidiary protection status. Chapter 5 provides for the accelerated examination procedure. Chapter 6 implements the provisions of the asylum procedures regulation relating to the asylum border procedure. This new procedure sets a 12-week time limit for first instance and appeal decisions to be completed for certain categories of applications. The aim is to issue decisions in the quickest time possible to those less likely to have an entitlement to international protection. That is one of the most significant aspects of this new legislation. It places an obligation on this State to ensure that we process applications, in certain instances under the asylum border procedure, within a period of 12 weeks. That expedited process is fair to the applicant and fair to the State. Part 6 deals with the right of an applicant to appeal to the new tribunal for asylum and returns appeals where an application for international protection is refused at first instance. The time limits to appeal will be set at the maximum of the range specified in asylum procedures regulation. These time limits will be 10 days for appeals where the applicant was subject to the accelerated examination procedure or asylum border procedure and one month for other appeals. The tribunal will be required to make a decision in respect of an appeal without holding an oral hearing unless the appeals officer is of the opinion that a full and ex nunc examination of both facts and points of law cannot be achieved without an oral hearing. That is another very significant change that will arise as a result of this legislation, if it is enacted. At present, most appeals are determined alongside an oral hearing. In future, oral hearings under the new legislative procedure will be the exception. The phrase "ex nunc" is a Latin phrase essentially meaning "from now on". It is used as a legal term to signify that the appeal will take account of circumstances pertaining at the time of the appeal and not in the past. In deciding whether an oral hearing is necessary, the appeals officer must have regard to guidelines issued by the chief appeals officer relating to appeals. Part 7 deals with the rights and entitlements of persons who have been granted international protection. It provides for certain rights for beneficiaries of international protection and permission to reside in the State. Part 8 sets out the circumstances where voluntary return to a person’s country of origin, country of former habitual residence, or a third country where the person is legally entitled to reside, may be offered. The option of voluntary return will not be offered to persons who have committed a serious offence or who are a danger to the security of the State. Part 8 also makes provision for withdrawal of international protection and the right to appeal of a person subject to withdrawal of international protection. Part 9 provides for the making of a return decision at the same time as a decision which rejects an international protection application. When a return decision is made, an entry ban notice will be issued to require the person to remain outside the State. Where a person opts for voluntary return, complies with all aspects and satisfactorily confirms his or her return, the entry ban notice and return decision will be revoked. However, an entry ban notice will not be revoked where the person poses a risk to public policy, public order or national security. That combination of returns and exclusion is a new aspect to it as well. Chapter 2 provides for appropriate alignment with relevant provisions of the return border procedure regulation. Applicants whose applications are rejected under the asylum border procedure will, with limited exceptions, be placed in the return border procedure. Part 10 provides for matters relating to programme refugees and the process that will apply where it is proposed that Ireland should request the European Commission to activate the procedure in the crisis and force majeure regulation. Part 11 provides for the establishment, membership and functions of the new tribunal. It will be known as the tribunal for asylum and returns appeals. It will operate separately from IPAT and deal only with appeals against international protection returns decisions made under this legislation, which will commence on 12 June. Part 12 provides for the establishment of an independent monitoring mechanism, as provided for in the screening regulation and the asylum border procedures regulation, which will be headed by a chief inspector of asylum border procedures. The chief inspector will monitor compliance with EU and international law, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, during the screening of applicants and the application of the asylum border procedure. The chief inspector will have the power to investigate allegations of breaches of rights and to inspect asylum border facilities. Part 12 will also establish an advisory board for the chief inspector. The advisory board’s purpose will be to consult, guide and advise the chief inspector in relation to his or her duties and the performance of his or her functions. Part 13 makes provision for miscellaneous matters, including the designation of safe countries of origin and safe third countries. Part 14 provides for transitional provisions and amendments to the International Protection Act 2015. Existing caseloads of applications and appeals will continue to be processed under the 2015 Act, with the new arrangements applying to international protection applications lodged from 12 June of this year. Part 15 provides for amendments to other enactments. The Schedule sets out the text of the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. I now want to mention the amendments I intend to introduce on Committee and Report Stages. I will introduce amendments to give effect to the reception conditions directive. These will include provisions for material reception conditions, restrictions of freedom of movement, detention, alternatives to detention, special reception needs and labour market access. There will be amendments to make provision for legal counselling, legal advice and legal aid, as required under the asylum procedures regulation. I will introduce provisions on temporary protection, which will include expanded and clarified provisions to deal with the temporary protection of displaced persons, including revocation of temporary protection. My Department and the Office of the Attorney General are developing provisions for inclusion in the Bill to give effect to the proposals approved by the Government last November on family reunification. These propose that beneficiaries of international protection must wait for a defined period before bringing family members to Ireland and must be able to show proof that they are self-sufficient. I am reflecting on the appropriate period to ensure the correct balance is struck between the interests of the Irish public and those seeking family reunification, recognising that our resources are not unlimited and that those seeking reunification should be able to support any persons joining them. Before I finish, I would like to address suggestions that this Bill is prioritising speed over fairness. I do not believe that is accurate. This legislation strikes a fair balance between the two. It reinforces Ireland’s commitment to providing refuge and protection to those who need it. This will be done by building a system that is sustainable, fair and efficient and that meets our obligations under international law. I look forward to working with colleagues in the House as we continue our discussions on this important legislation in the coming weeks. It is obviously very significant legislation. It is very lengthy and detailed, and I want to give the House as much time as possible on Second Stage for its consideration. That is why I think three days have been allocated for the purpose of debating this on Second Stage. I look forward to hearing contributions from other Deputies in the House. I will listen to them closely, as will my colleague Deputy Brophy, the Minister of State, who has worked very closely with me on formulating these proposals. Although colleagues are perfectly entitled to be critical of the proposals put forward by the Government, I ask them to put forward how they would change the legislation if they were in the same position as me and the Minister of State. If they had an opportunity to include provisions to change asylum laws in Ireland, what changes would they make? They should not feel obliged to restrict themselves to what is within the parameters of the EU regulations and directives. They should tell us what measures they would like to see within our asylum laws in Ireland. These measures will be given consideration. I commend the Bill to the House.

As the Minister has acknowledged, the primary purpose of the International Protection Bill is to provide for Ireland’s opting in to the EU migration and asylum pact. The State had an opt-out from that pact but Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael decided to discard it. They did that for narrow political reasons, so that they could say they had done something about immigration, when in fact all they have done is tie the hands of future Governments in making decisions in respect of immigration policy. It was an act of folly that has now been recognised by virtually everyone, except, of course, the Government itself. The pre-legislative scrutiny report on the Bill by the cross-party Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, which the Minister has alluded to, recommended that the Government reconsider opting out of the majority of the provisions of the EU migration and asylum pact. During its deliberations, the committee received numerous written and oral submissions on the Bill, coming from very different perspectives, but there was one point on which it seemed everyone agreed: there is no chance that the Government will be able to deliver on the obligations it has signed up to within the timeframe laid out in the legislation. Reflecting on the evidence the committee received, the report raised serious concerns about the ability of the State to meet the requirements it is signing up to under the EU pact, and noted that failures to adhere to the commitments under the pact could result in infringement proceedings and hefty fines. In other words, the Irish taxpayer could end up paying huge sums in EU fines for not adhering to the terms of a pact that there was no logical reason or obligation to sign up to in the first place. Sinn Féin has been clear from the outset that signing up wholesale to the EU migration and asylum pact is not in Ireland’s interest. We will continue to oppose moves that undermine Irish sovereignty and that hand over more powers to the EU, particularly when that impedes our ability to make decisions in respect of migration. Here is the point on democracy that the Minister seems to miss. He acknowledges it would not be legally possible to seek to opt out of measures we have opted into and are legally required to implement. The difficulty is that democracy is not just about the ability of governments to make decisions; it is also about the ability of the people to kick governments out and allow other governments to make different decisions if that reflects their will. The Minister’s party and Fine Gael have locked us into provisions that no other Government can opt out of. The international protection system in this State is close to dysfunctional and riddled with problems. Fixing those problems does not require us to sign up to the EU migration and asylum pact. In fact, that approach diverts efforts away from addressing them and into the charade we have today, where the Department is instead concentrating on rushing legislation through the Oireachtas to meet an EU deadline. As has been said many times, the pact does not consider Ireland’s unique position as a divided nation with an EU member state and a non-EU member state, and as a State that is part of a common travel area with a neighbouring island outside the EU, from which most international protection applicants, the Minister tells us, actually travel to Ireland. Let us be clear: we did not need to sign up to the EU migration and asylum pact to sort out delays in processing applications. We did not need the pact to address delays in the appeals system. We did not need the pact to ensure decisions are enforced. We do not need the pact to address the ongoing profiteering that is the hallmark of this system. We do not need an EU pact for any of those things. We need a competent government. Instead, we are presented with a complex and extensive Bill that has been rushed through to comply with an EU deadline. This is no way to legislate or to allow proper scrutiny. Before we even begin to look at this Bill, we are told the Minister will be introducing substantial amendments on Committee Stage. It appears that the Government may also attempt to bypass the committee, again avoiding proper scrutiny of all aspects of this Bill. This rushed, panicky approach leads me to believe it will be only a matter of time before these Houses are dealing with amending legislation to fix new problems, which will undoubtedly emerge in the implementation of this Bill. If we are to have a robust, fair and enforceable system, concerns that the Bill may not provide sufficient protections for vulnerable applicants, including victims of trafficking and stateless persons, need to be addressed. Significant concerns were raised during the pre-legislative scrutiny process regarding what is meant by legal counselling and who will be able to provide it. These need to be addressed. There are also concerns about the ability to meet the timeframes set out in the Bill, given the current crisis in legal aid and the fact that Tusla is significantly overstretched. Stakeholders and legal experts have told us about other concerns, and if the Minister does not allow the committee to deal with them during the process he will essentially prevent the Oireachtas from doing its job. I firmly believe, and I will continue to say this, that it should be a priority for this State to retain maximum sovereignty in the areas of freedom, security and justice. That is why we had an opt-out under Protocol 21. In the context of the migration and asylum pact, I have stated that we should not have opted in to the procedures regulation, the crisis on force majeure regulation, the qualification directive, the reception conditions directive or the EU settlement framework. I have acknowledged it and Sinn Féin has said this. It appears that this is what the Minister does not understand. There are a number of aspects of the pact that it was in Ireland's interest to opt into. We supported opt-ins relating to the asylum and migration management regulation and the Eurodac regulation. That was because these regulations are necessary for the sharing of information and implementing a returns policy. That makes sense, but we also have to recognise that protecting and maximising sovereignty in the context of EU integration has been demonstrated to be an important value of the Irish people. We have seen that with EU treaties. It is the people of this country who are best placed to make decisions and adjudicate on Governments in the context of how they are implemented. The Government signed up to all aspects of the EU pact but is not prepared to deal with the implications of that. As already stated, there is no consideration of the common travel area, CTA, despite Government asserting that most international protection applicants actually arrive via the CTA. The fact that opt-outs under Protocol 21 exist in the first place is the result - as Government acknowledged in its own electronic travel authorisation, ETA - of the need to maintain the CTA with Britain. What we learned from the justice committee's pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme of what has become the International Protection Bill is that while the Government signed up to all aspects of the pact, it is not prepared for the implications of that. Officials acknowledge that there is no consideration regarding the CTA area and that the Department has no idea how much we could be liable for in infringement proceedings if we are unable to meet the requirements of the pact. I have raised with the Minister on a number of occasions the need for a bilateral agreement with Britain on returns. We need a bilateral agreement with Britain to ensure those international protection applicants who should be processed in Britain can be returned there in a timely way. In 2020, Ireland and Britain signed and agreed informal non-legally binding operational arrangements, but very little has been done to advance these. It is now time to do so. I contend that doing so should be a priority. As a sovereign state, Ireland can and should put in place an international protection system and migration policy that is robust, fair and enforced and that is based on the unique circumstances and challenges that the State faces. That this is not yet being done is a political failure. It is because of the failures of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in government that our migration and international protection system is operating in crisis mode. Decisions and appeals are taking too long. On average, it now takes more than two and a half years for an international protection application to be finalised. Deportations are not enforced. Ministers have acknowledged here time and time again that in many cases they do not actually know whether people who are subject to orders have left the country or not. Last year, there were 4,700 deportation orders signed and 2,700 confirmed deportations. In 2024, there were 2,403 deportation orders signed and 1,122 confirmed deportations. In 2023, there were 859 orders and 318 confirmed deportations. It can be seen that in each of those years, the figures relating to confirmed deportations were less than half the number of those signed. That is the reality that the Minister has attempted to obscure by focusing on a small number of high-profile deportation flights. By removing profiteering, resourcing the system and enforcing decisions, we could actually have a fair system that works for the people of this country and for those fleeing war and persecution. Binding us to EU rules that do not account for our unique challenges is not the answer. Any discussion on the international protection system must address the massive, ongoing profiteering from the provision of IPAS accommodation that is often inappropriate . The cost of IPAS accommodation exceeded €1 billion last year. Hundreds of millions more will be spent on accommodation for Ukrainians. A small number of private operators have made millions from the Government's dysfunctional approach. There is no transparency, including around what qualifies many of these operators to provide services. The accommodation and the services provided at a very high cost have, it must be said, also often been low quality. There have been significant problems in relation to issues such as fire safety. The average rate that is being paid per bed per day for IPAS accommodation rose by 68% between 2022 and 2024. That resulted in massive profits for providers of accommodation. In one case, we famously saw a company that was previously operating as a café go from making €2,000 in profits annually to paying its directors €4.5 million in a single year. The Comptroller and Auditor General was scathing in his review of IPAS contracts. His report found there was a lack of due diligence, gaps in payment controls and no contracts for properties where substantial payments were being made. There were even issues with a lack of insurance and fire certificates. The report found that the detail in some invoices lacked clarity, that it was not possible to reconcile claimed capacity in some cases as contracts were not available, and that the prepayment checklist used by IPAS did not include a check to verify the correct capacity or occupancy. The review found that for 35% of the samples examined, the invoiced rate was not clear and could not be verified because signed contracts were not available. Those issues emerged on foot of just a small sample of the contracts examined by the Comptroller and Auditor General. What is happening is clear. I have said time and again that I do not know why the Minister refuses to act. There has to be a thorough review of every IPAS contract because there are, without question, other scandals that have yet to be divulged to Irish taxpayers who are picking up the tab. It is disgraceful that Ministers just shrug off any calls for accountability and transparency in respect of this matter. In the pre-legislative scrutiny report on general scheme of the International Protection Bill, there was a recognition of the profiteering that has taken place to date and a recommendation that the amount paid per day per bed for accommodation in the international protection system be capped. Given what has been exposed to date in regard to contracts relating to IPAS accommodation, the committee also recommended that due diligence, vetting and beneficial ownership takes be required in respect of any company or organisation that seeks to secure a contract for the provision of accommodation or services for those in the international protection system. If we are to address the problems with the international protection system, then we need to also address the matter of where IPAS accommodation is located. To date, the location of IPAS accommodation has been decided on one criterion alone, namely the availability of a building or, in other words, by the private interests of property owners. It is an approach that has caused division and created anger and frustration in communities who have felt they are entirely disconnected from decisions that affect their local area. Sinn Féin has been clear that new IPAS centres should only be placed in areas where the resources are in place to accommodate them. That means not in areas where people are already struggling in terms of a lack of resources. We have said that the Pobal HP deprivation index should be used to identify communities that should absolutely not be considered for emergency accommodation. The process of identifying suitable locations should commence with a pre-assessment of the needs of communities. That is the only way to ensure that the needs of both the communities and IPAS residents can be met. The availability of services, including GPs and school places, proximity to transport and existing levels of disadvantage in areas should govern the selection of locations for accommodations, not simply the fact that a private operator has a building they are willing to allow to be used in this process. Again, the planning exemption for IPAS and Ukrainian accommodation should end now. These were emergency measures that are now being abused as a mechanism to avoid any input from local communities. We have increasingly seen the ludicrous situation across the State where planning exemptions are being sought by property owners for a buildings the Department insists it is not even considering for this purpose. That becomes fertile ground for those with negative agendas to create confusion and division within communities. As I mentioned, there are serious questions regarding the Government's ability to meet the timeframes for processing set out in this legislation, given the extensive delays that have characterised the international protection system to date. The Government's implementation plan for the EU migration and asylum pact projects staffing numbers in the event of either 15,000 applicants being in the system or in the event of there being 18,000 in July. The staffing complement required to process 15,000 applicants is 1,549. The staffing complement to process 18,000 applicants is 1,769. Last year, between the International Protection Office, the international protection and integration division of the Department and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal, there were 926 staff and 107 vacancies. That is a vacancy rate of over 10%. The total number is nowhere near the projected requirements. There are also very serious concerns that neither Tusla nor the civil legal aid system will be able to cope with the demands they will face under this legislation. The Legal Aid Board has indicated that it may struggle to meet the demand for its services within the tighter timeframes provided for under the Bill. Of course, there are very good reasons to have very serious concerns about the capacity of Tusla to fulfil the responsibilities ascribed to it under this Bill when we consider the number of unaccompanied migrant children who have gone missing from State care in recent years and the myriad other debacles Tusla has been involved in. It is easy to understand the questions people will ask about the logic of adding to its role. There is understandable apprehension about the ability of the State to keep vulnerable children safe and particularly given the role of traffickers and people smugglers in bringing minors into the State and their involvement in their subsequent disappearance from State care. Given that this legislation contains provisions in respect of vulnerability checks, I want to highlight again the continued links the Department has with a company that was previously found to have supplied fake Garda vetting documents in the context of vulnerability assessments. It is questionable how the timeframe set out in the EU pact will be met while maintaining a fair and robust system, particularly in view of the current processing timelines, increasing the risk the State will face infringement proceedings and large fines. It is crucial that those granted international protection are integrated into Irish society, that they are facilitated in participating in their local communities in order that they can get to know their neighbours and wider community and that they be given the opportunities to learn about Irish culture, language, history and values and share their own with us. In other countries where this has not been done, we can see how it has undermined social cohesion and created divisions and ghettoisation. The Minister has indicated that he will bring forward amendments to delay family reunification by three years. These proposals are a distraction from the real problems with the system, including delays and the failure to enforce deportations. The latter have had a much more significant impact in terms of numbers. Last year, 669 applications for family reunification were granted, including in respect of 452 children and 153 spouses. That compares with the more than 2,500 deportation orders that were not enforced last year. Family reunification plays a critical role in the successful integration of refugees. There need to be mechanisms around self-sufficiency and we need a robust system that is enforced, but we do not need to either be performative or undermine integration, which is key to social cohesion. Family reunification policies need to be sustainable but also fair, particularly in the reunification of parents and their children. The Minister mentioned a number of times that there will be lots of opportunities for the Opposition to bring forward amendments. I think he said he would welcome amendments from the Opposition. Will he give a commitment that when the Opposition goes to the effort of preparing amendments, he will show us the courtesy of allowing them to be properly considered and scrutinised? Will he also give a commitment that the select committee will have an opportunity to scrutinise, debate and tease out the amendments he brings forward. The only way we can do that is if we actually deal with Committee Stage at the select committee. Will the Minister to give a commitment that he will not try to guillotine this Bill or bring it in here as a mechanism to try to rush it through? There are things more important than EU pacts. These include the right of the Irish people to know that their legislators looked through every line of what the Minister described as the most significant piece of migration legislation to come before these Houses in many years.

We are talking in a bit of a vacuum here because any amendments the Minister has spoken about bringing forward, either in the media or here, have not actually been brought forward. As the previous speaker indicated, we should discuss any amendments in full on Committee Stage. I also ask that the Minister not guillotine the Bill. As he stated, it is such an important and comprehensive Bill. On foot of that, it should not be guillotined in any shape or form. There are a lot of concerns about the Bill because so many areas require scrutiny. The detention of unaccompanied children is a major issue. The creation of a disproportionate and overarching power for the Minister is something I will speak about in a moment. The information that will be provided to an applicant as part of this process and what it is in totality does not seem clear. There are issues around age assessments. Safeguarding is a huge area. There is also the issue of vulnerability assessment in the context of the fact that there will only be preliminary analysis done rather than an ongoing process, particularly as some things not be caught or discovered in the initial process. There are issues in relation to the independence of the appeals body. The Government is very unclear about the scope of the chief inspectorate and whether oral appeals will be allowed. There are also issues with the powers the Minister will be granted. There seems to be a pattern within the Department regarding a lot of the legislation and work it is bringing through. Much of this is not fully finished. I appreciate that there are amendments and legislation that need to be brought in, but there is so much that is not fundamentally not tied down in this Bill. We just do not know whether the provisions relating to many areas are going to be legally sound. I do not know if the Minister knows they will be legally sound. I am genuine in saying that. I admit that this is a very tricky area, but there is a time conditionality involved. While we are trying to work with the Minister, it is genuinely difficult to do so when we are shooting in the dark, which is what we are doing here. There are a number of omissions when it comes to the Bill. Legal counselling is not mentioned or defined. My colleague Deputy Ahern will be speaking on this matter. He and I are sharing time. The Minister has made serious statements on the issue of family unification and the three-year rule. We know this is coming but we do not know what will be involved. We need more information on that. The conditions around receptions and how they will be managed need to be dealt with. Issues relating to a designated authority are not included. Information on age assessments, and how they will be handled and regulated, and how the representative role will be regulated has not been published. The Bill is very broad when it comes to the powers being given to the Minister. These powers are fairly overarching. The Bill deals with the way the Minister can decide as to what information can be given to an applicant, if other organisations or NGOs can give out information, if applicants can appeal directly, if the chief inspector can be removed in the interests of the Government and the funding of the inspectorate. When we spoke at the committee, the issue relating to the chief inspector gave rise to a range of issues regarding the independence of the inspectorate from the Government. The Bill does not define what is meant by legal counselling. We had a lot of discussion on this at the committee and about who will provide it. Huge numbers of members of the legal profession are discussing this matter. It is something which really needs to be nailed down. Fewer than five months remain before the pact is due to be implemented. What is proposed creates serious uncertainty about applicants’ entitlements to legal advice at all stages of the process. I am very concerned that this is an area in respect of which there will be a huge level of kick-back and a large number of test cases. Dare I say, many people in the Minister’s former profession will be licking their lips and seeing dollar signs. I might as well say it to the Minister inside here - at least I have the guts to say it to him - they are all licking their lips asking if this will be a big payday and if the Minister is the Manchurian candidate for the legal professional in the Department of justice. I say that as a joke but there is serious concern as to whether he will get this through and it will be sound, and that there will not be a whole range of test cases where so much will be tied up. That will be a big problem for the Minister and he needs to get it right. At this point the jury is out on it. There is a lack of clarity on this and a big question over whether counselling can be provided by the legal profession under existing professional and ethical rules, and whether IP applicants will be denied customised individual advice as they are entitled to rather than just generic stuff. It is a fairly hefty concern. I am sure the Minister has read recommendations 82 to 85 from our pre-legislative scrutiny. If I were him, I would take some advice regarding the explicit provision on guaranteed access to free legal assistance. The issue in relation to legal counselling tied us up in knots. We really need to see where the Minister plans on going on that. Regarding gaps in age assessment, the Bill lacks clarity on who will do this work and what experience and qualifications they will have. This really needs to be dealt with. There is no detail on what constitutes a suitable medical means of assessing age. When it comes to the issue of children, this is absolutely essential. This is a serious gap in age assessment safeguards. There are also concerns over the independent monitoring mechanism, which is obviously essential for the protection of the rights of everyone in the system. Serious concerns remain about the effectiveness of the independent monitoring system as set out in the EU's fundamental rights agency. The chief inspector's powers appear mostly regulatory rather than investigative with unclear authority to initiate investigations of many potential breaches, whatever they may be, including assault, sexual assault and various other breaches. In relation to a number of other areas, including the detention and restriction of movement, proper procedures must apply with procedural safeguards. We cannot have a situation where it is de facto detention. There must absolutely be a prohibition on the detention of children, which is essential. The detention of adults should only be a measure of last resort. The word "proportionate" needs to come into play here. It is not very clear how that will be achieved. Moving on to the issue of family reunification, to be straight about it, not alone do we feel this is unfair and ill judged, it is downright cruel because it is not three years. Effectively, when everything is added up, it is five years. It is disproportionate and unfair, particularly when it comes to genuine cases. Of all the countries that should know what we are dealing with here, we should know what we are talking about. It is not appropriate that the Minister is pursuing this without the definition of how he is going to do it. As far as the Labour Party is concerned, instigating a three-year waiting period is unacceptable and cruel. It creates a different message from what we believe this country should be putting out in relation to how we deal sensitively with these issues. When we discussed this topic previously, I said that the issue of where international applicants are refused asylum in other EU countries needs to be looked at as regards how that can be utilised in this country. The Minister has not addressed that, but I expect he will do so in the future because I believe it is a genuine issue and something that could be quite helpful in reality. Furthermore, how we use language in this area is very important. I am very concerned that the language used, not alone by those in government, in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and, dare I say it, some Independents, but also by Sinn Féin at times, where they are all trying to ride both horses, is completely hypocritical, unacceptable and at times actually publicly dangerous. It needs to stop. As far as I am concerned, the Minister can do better. I believe in a rules-based system. I also believe that if people fail those rules, they cannot stay in this country. I have no issue with deportation or any of that. However, I do have an issue with balance. In tandem with what the Minister is doing and in tandem with the obvious need to introduce a Bill of some scale like this, there also needs to be a public awareness campaign on the positivity of necessary inward migration. That does not happen. What happens is that the Minister for justice, the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach, Sinn Féin Members, certain Independent Members who are in government and others stand up and say, "Oh yeah, we have workers and they should be respected." They then spend the rest of the time going on about the issues, which at times are frightening and very upsetting for many people who come into this country. For the first time in my career, I have had migrants who are working in this country come to my office saying they are afraid. I recently heard the story of a migrant, not in my constituency, who is working in care. When they were out one day, they got horrendous abuse from particular individuals in the area where they live. Later on, around Christmas time, while they were working through their work in care looking after elderly people, amazingly, one of the people who gave the abuse was in visiting a member of their family. Who was looking after the member of that family? It was the same person they gave the abuse to. Let us call a spade a spade here. We need all these workers and we need more because, without them, this country would stop. We need them in care, tourism, hospitality, agriculture and, dare I say it, in very high-end jobs as well. We are failing to send that message. We need proportionality as regards what we are doing in this country when it comes to migration. I say this clearly to the Minister and everybody else in government and in Sinn Féin: if they do not do it, we will do it. Somebody has to present a positive message on inward migration. Those in government are responsible but they are bloody well not doing it. In fact, at times they are scaring people. To mix up the asylum process with inward migration is a disgrace. The numbers are tiny by comparison with what we need to keep our country progressing economically and socially.

The Deputy is making the conflation, not us.

Excuse me, I am not making any conflation. I am actually talking about lived experience. Is the Deputy calling me a liar?

He should represent the issue and not-----

I am representing the issue.

Deputy Crowe should direct his remarks through the Chair and allow Deputy Kelly to speak.

I did not start this.

Does the Deputy want to share his time?

We will get through the meat of the Bill on Committee Stage because so much is missing. The facts are that the Government is deliberately putting out spurious messages on migration and what is going on here is a bloody disgrace. The people who have come into this country from other countries and who work here are welcome. That is the message the Government should be sending out, rather than leaving us to do it.

We do it every day.

Tell your colleagues.

Shameful.

Over the course of this Government’s time in office, we have seen a disappointing pattern of irresponsible grandstanding by Ministers trying to play tough on immigration. This Bill is the latest example. It goes further than is required under the EU migration pact in restricting the rights of migrants and leaves gaping holes when it comes to protecting those rights. There were real issues with the pact, which were raised in debates at the time, but now the Government wants to go further still in constraining migrant rights. I want to speak to a couple of specific issues that show this Bill for what it is. First is the Bill’s use of the term "legal counselling". Rather than providing individuals with good old-fashioned, tried and tested legal advice from a solicitor during the first stage of an international protection process, the Government is saying it will provide something called "legal counselling". I have never heard this phrase, despite practising as a lawyer for many years. This is a term introduced by the EU pact but it remains undefined to date. We do not know what it will involve or who will provide it. It seems to be little more than a one-way information-giving process in which an applicant would have no ability to interrogate the information given to them against their own personal circumstances, or to ask questions and receive advice and guidance on it. As the Law Society has pointed out, in the absence of clarity as to what it is, we need to ask whether a "legal counselling" regime can be fully set up and resourced by June of this year. The EU pact does not require this. The Government could and should have used the term "legal advice" but has actively chosen not to. That creates real uncertainty as to the rights of migrants. It risks undermining access to effective legal assistance, as required under the pact. Solicitors cannot be expected to provide general legal counselling while the State withholds individualised, tailored legal advice from people who would otherwise be their clients. It is easy to imagine scenarios where the absence of proper legal advice leads to errors in applications and sees genuine asylum seekers, fleeing war or persecution, fail in their applications or be denied specialist care. That would be an abject failure of the Government to see through our obligations. Previously, asylum applicants were only entitled to be represented at the second stage of the asylum process, before the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. This resulted in 90% of asylum seekers being rejected at first instance. I was proud to be part of a programme providing early legal advice for asylum seekers, in conjunction with the Irish Refugee Council and my former law firm, A&L Goodbody, which resulted in far higher success rates for applicants. We know how important full legal advice is to ensuring individuals can vindicate their rights. The Minister knows this as well as anyone else. The dilution of this right to advice is a retrograde step and can only be seen as a further cynical attempt to limit the numbers of successful asylum applications. Another major issue with this Bill is the way in which it significantly increases the criminalisation of IP applicants. It creates a range of new offences for applicants who are lawfully resident in the State while exercising their right to seek asylum. That is the wrong direction of travel. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, has pointed, in particular, to the criminalisation of the use of false or even substitute documents. When we are talking about people fleeing war or persecution, we are talking about people who, by definition, will often not hold official documents from their country of origin. Members can see how easy it would be for documents to be seized by a trafficker or a rogue government, or just lost in the chaos of fleeing a war zone. If we criminalise this behaviour, as this Bill does, we effectively criminalise the very route to seeking asylum. The Bill will introduce a new chief inspector of asylum border procedures, as required by the pact. The Government claims this will be an independent role but what is set out here falls far short of that, as I am sure others will go into. A faster, more efficient asylum process is a worthy aim. A Bill that did just that would be welcome but this is a Bill that seems more interested in limiting the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers than anything else.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I will be supporting the Bill. In response to previous comments, I suggest we should not conflate inward migration with international protection. I agree with Deputy Kelly that racism should have no place in this debate, this House or public commentary. The right to claim asylum is at the core of international law and Irish values. That said, we owe the public, and applicants themselves, a system that is clear, rules-based and workable. When a process drags on for months or years, nobody wins. Genuine applicants are left in limbo, communities lose confidence and the State ends up paying far more than it should. That is why the central test for this Bill is simple: does it make our system faster, fairer and more effective while protecting rights? In broad terms, I believe it does. The Bill is, in effect, a reset of our international protection system. It streamlines decisions and the returns process. It introduces a new border procedure, with defined and shorter time limits for decisions, appeals and return orders in appropriate cases. It reforms the appeals architecture through a new second-instance body, the tribunal for asylum and returns appeals, and it reduces reliance on oral hearings when a full and fair examination can be achieved on papers. Importantly, it also establishes a chief inspector of asylum border procedures as an independent rights monitor. I particularly welcome the Minister's remarks on Chapter 3 of Part 3 of the Bill on age determination. These are practical reforms and they go to the heart of what the public expects and what applicants deserve, namely, timely decisions, clearer outcomes and a system that cannot be abused. We also need to be honest about the wider context. Ireland cannot go it alone on migration and asylum. The pressures are European and the response has to be a pan-European one, acting together. This Bill is closely linked to Ireland implementing the EU migration and asylum pact measures we have opted in to. We have a hard deadline to have the new system in place by 12 June 2026. A common approach matters because it reduces the incentive for secondary movement across member states and it supports consistent decision-making. It also matters because Ireland’s position is uniquely complicated by the common travel area. The open arrangements that benefit millions for work, family and daily life were never designed to be a workaround for asylum. The reality creates added obligations for us, in that we must work closely with EU partners and engage seriously with the United Kingdom so that policy changes on one side do not simply displace pressures onto the other. I note the UK is seeking to access elements of the pact. That, in itself, is proof of its necessity. I welcome the clearer emphasis and communications from the Minister on his appointment. The shift is towards a rules-based system that is efficient, credible and aligned with how many other EU member states operate. I also welcome the Minister’s engagement at European level. We need this treated as an EU issue, not a collection of countries going it alone. I visited Brussels last year to engage with Commissioner Michael McGrath and his officials, underscoring why co-ordination, convergence and enforcement across the EU matter. The Commissioner’s portfolio includes democracy, justice and the rule of law, which are directly relevant to how Europe maintains a system that is both firm and rights compliant. This Bill will not solve every challenge overnight but it is a serious step in the right direction. It creates a faster system which is fairer. It protects those who genuinely need refuge, reduces unnecessary costs, restores confidence and ensures Ireland plays its part, in partnership with Europe and in close co-operation with the common travel area. I welcome the Bill, and I look forward to engaging constructively as it progresses through this House.

I thank the Minister and am glad to have the opportunity to participate in the debate. This is a very serious and emotive issue. It matters to an awful lot of people. Sometimes there are debates when the political charges across the House add value but I was disappointed by Deputy Alan Kelly a short while ago. I was quite surprised by his character. It is not something I would expect from him. As my colleague said, he was conflating. Dropping in buzzwords and zingers looks good on the social media video but misrepresents what many of us here want to see, which is a supportive policy for migration that is there to protect people in international protection but that also has a robust set of rules which ensure the policy has integrity. To misrepresent that is rather shameful. When he is putting up his social media videos tonight, some of us might correct the record underneath with a comment or two. Anyway, I will get to the point. Seventy years ago, the Hungarian Revolution began. With it, a couple of buses arrived in my home village of Meelick. There was an Army encampment in Knockalisheen right on the border of counties Clare and Limerick. Those old wooden huts that the Army were barracked in during the emergency years of the Second World War became accommodation for people fleeing the Hungarian Revolution. Those little huts, which were only taken down 20 or 30 years ago, became the first refugee centre at that point. It is Ireland's longest continuously used refugee centre and we are so proud of it. Despite what Deputy Kelly might want to say on TikTok or wherever else tonight, the people who grew up there went to school with me. They were at my wedding. I played with them as a kid. They were friends and they still are. I went into the courtroom for some of them when they were being deported back to their home countries when leave to remain applications had failed. I went into the courtroom with a few people because I believed heart and soul in their story, having intimately known it. When I became a teacher in 2006, my first job when I graduated was teaching children from that refugee centre. Therefore, we are incredibly proud of that centre and our community and what it has done over the years. It is not all perfect. It is not rose-tinted. Many people have spent a decade or 12 years there waiting for their application to be cleared. It is what it is and we are proud of that. Yet, when reforms happen, those reforms need to benefit the likes of the Knockalisheen Accommodation Centre. The next place I wish to speak about is the town of Lisdoonvarna. These are local examples that are very relevant in the national context. When the Ukrainian war broke out and when international protection levels hit their peak in terms of inward migration to Ireland, Lisdoonvarna was held up as the poster town in Ireland. The population increased fourfold across a six-month period. The population was around 300 people at the beginning of the war in Ukraine and, between that and inward migration, it increased fourfold. Straight away, we had ambassadors down from different countries. We had Ministers and State agency after State agency. There were boots on the ground everywhere. It was covered on the national news every night how incredibly positive this was. Local communities organised collections. One weekend, there was a collection of bicycles for the young children there. Another weekend, it was school uniforms. Every kind of fabulous integration thing happened. Then, suddenly, all of those supports evaporated. The agencies disappeared because the local crisis had become a national crisis. We did not see any of the agencies for ages. Lisdoonvarna went from being the poster child of what international protection should look like in Ireland's best practice model to being an absolute mess that was unsupported and a community struggling. The committees that were set up to welcome started lobbying politicians telling them they needed to come back and fix things. They told them the local classes were being taught in the cloakroom of the school and there were no doctors and no services. They told them no bus services were available. The response at the time was to give people hi-vis jackets and let them walk five or six miles over the road to the local school. It was crazy stuff. In time, when this legislation passes, there needs to be some case studies done around the country of where this was not very well handled. The Minister's predecessor did not handle some of the communications of this so well either. I welcome the Minister's forthright approach in the Ministry. I think it has been welcomed by the public and by the media. The commentary is good. This Department needs to be led with confidence. Our policies need to be explained with confidence and it explained that they are very fair but are also robust. It needs to be explained that if people are coming to Ireland fleeing war, persecution, famine or turmoil in their home country, this is a very welcoming and inclusive country. Our arms will wrap around them; we will support them. However, if people are coming in under some kind of a charade or false pretences, we have an equally robust system that will examine cases fairly and, if proven to be invalid, people will be deported. That is fair and is a principle we need to defend. This is a liberal democracy but every country has a policy that needs to be robust and fair so that people here in Ireland or people who might be considering coming to Ireland know the rule book of this country and know it is implemented fairly. I will speak about some of the reasons leave to remain applications are refused. It is very easy to say, "I am from Gaza. There is a war. My country has been bombed to pieces." That is very measurable because the whole world knows what is going on there. However, in my constituency, bearing in mind we have a major refugee centre in my community, I have encountered threats from the home country. Very often, it is sub-Saharan countries in which, if people return home, their daughters will have their genitalia mutilated. I have encountered threats to people of being killed, honour killings for being gay, homophobic attacks or honour killings if there have been acts of adultery. All of these are really hard to measure. They are really hard for the individual to convey when there is a hearing about their application and very often these people are sent home. I cannot be judge or jury. I often meet people at clinics or my constituency office but I fear some of them are going back to the bear pit and to very hazardous situations. The Minister's team has to be robust and fair but there are certain issues in some countries that are very hard to measure and to verify. There needs to be a consideration of that as well. During the heat of all of this, people were out banging drums, there were protests and fires were being lit. Thankfully, that has all cooled. It had to because there was a very far-right rhetoric just grasping the nettles here and misrepresenting what Ireland was all about. There is one key point regarding this idea of male-only accommodation. From a policy point of view, we should just get rid of it. I have never seen any group in society segregated according to gender. There are no male-only housing estates. I have yet to see one. There is no female-only housing estate. There is?

Schools.

Schools.

Schools. Okay, fair point. The Deputies might speak through the Chair next time. The point I am making on living arrangements is that there is no one living in gendered segregation. It is not right for the men living there and it is not right for their spouses, girlfriends or family members. It is not right at all and it needs to be part of policy going forward that we integrate. I spoke in a debate earlier relating to the Minister's Department and the suspension of those gardaí in Limerick. That is concluded. Going forward, will the Minister please appoint the most senior leadership roles in An Garda Síochána from within the organisation of An Garda Síochána? We do not need to be looking north of the Border to find the next leader and the next Commissioner. We need people who understand the spirit of policing by consent and the spirit of discretion that is so central to Garda policing. Those are just my own thoughts but I hope it might be factored into the next appointment.

That is for another day. I call Deputy Ó Laoghaire.

A little under two years ago, when the EU migration pact was being debated, it was an almost cavalier attitude by the Minister at the time. I understand that migration and the whole issue around international protection is complex. It was particularly challenging at the time when there was a significant increase. However, it seemed to be the attitude of the then Minister, in response to questions from me, not to consider at the time whether it might be wise for Ireland, in our very particular circumstances, not to opt into absolutely each and every element of it. As time goes on, and looking at the reflections of the justice committee, more and more people are coming to the conclusion that perhaps it was not wise for Ireland to sign up to each and every element of it. Ireland had the option to opt out purely because of our circumstances. Our circumstances are very particular. We have, whether we like it or not - I certainly do not - a land border with another jurisdiction, a common travel area with a jurisdiction that is not in the EU, and we require the flexibility to respond to situations that arise because of that. It was foolish not to adjust and account for that. This is what the legislation is fundamentally about. There are elements of it that we could benefit from but I do not agree we needed to sign up to each and every element of it. The system such as it is certainly needs change. It is failing in terms of value for money. It is failing migrants, communities and the whole of society. Certainly, it needs change and significant investment as well as legislative change. The final thing I will say is in on respect. That needs to be true right across the system. It needs to be true in terms of communities. Too often, their interests were discarded. Going forward, it also needs to be true in terms of the asylum seekers and migrants themselves. Decisions need to be made quickly but everyone needs to be treated with respect and get decent conditions, and there should be oversight of that too.

This particular pact has put forward a set of recommendations, some of which are positive but many of which are not in line with what we need to be doing in this country. That is widely recognised. We have a situation where the committee has looked at this and it has recognised that there are many aspects of it that do not recognise the unique situation we have where we have a border with a non-EU state which is an open border, as it absolutely needs to be. Yet, this pact does not give any recognition to that or pay any regard to it. There are serious issues with it which need to be dealt with. Doing it all as a package is this notion of one size fits all for all countries in Europe. Ireland is an example of a country where one size does not fit all. Even at this late stage, that is why the Minister needs to reconsider signing up to all aspects of this pact. The Government needs to look at this again and come back to what most logical people would recognise the situations to be. We have a particular problem in some parts of the country where people have protested. In many parts of the country, including in my community, migrants, in particular people using IPAS, have settled well and done well. For hundreds of years, Irish people went around the world with their hand out looking for a welcome. In general, they got it, and that has to be recognised. The riots in Dublin were not organised by migrants. The burning of people out of their homes was not organised by migrants. They were organised by far right elements in this country who also need to be stood up to. That is something the Minister needs to take into account. Returning to the Bill, we have robust legislation in place which needs to be implemented and is not being implemented. Many people who come here do not get a fair crack of the whip because they feel they are not being dealt with adequately. If they are entitled to stay, they should be able to stay. If they are not entitled to stay, that should be implemented as well. This legislation, which takes a one-size-fits-all approach for all countries in Europe, is not appropriate under these circumstances.

There is a world in which this Bill could have been a turning point. This was potentially an opportunity to build an international protection system that would put dignity, fairness, care and, yes, efficiency at the heart of how we treat people who come to our country seeking protection. We had one such vision. We had the Catherine Day report, which stated we should move away from privatisation, build public, not-for-profit accommodation and build trust. We had a chance to honour that. Instead of seizing the opportunity to deliver a protection system grounded in compassion and rights, the Minister has produced legislation that goes further and harder than the EU pact ever required. He has done so at the expense of human dignity. The way in which this Bill has been brought forward adds insult to that injury. For the past year, every time I or anyone else raised the failures of our current protection system, the answer, whether from the Minister for justice or other Ministers, has always been the same. It is that the International Protection Bill is coming and we should wait it because it will fix everything. This Bill has been used as a deflection to say real reforms were on the way and we just had to hold tight so the Minister could get it right. At pre-legislative scrutiny, vital heads of Bill were missing and we were told the full Bill would arrive by the end of 2025. We did not get it until last Thursday, nine days after the Minister's press release indicating he had just published it. However, we got conversations with details of restrictions on refugee family reunification. Those were laid out in detail whereas the rest of the detail in the Bill was not. That was not a tactical omission. Now, in a rush to transpose it by June, we have a Bill that is still riddled with gaps and key protections are still missing or, at best, vague. It leaves the best interests of the child assessments undefined. It keeps legal counselling deliberately ambiguous. It creates an independent monitoring mechanism the Minister can control. There is no clarity on how medical vulnerability assessments will be carried out or by whom, even though they are mandatory under the pact. On family reunification, the Bill refers vaguely back to the pact. All the while, we have the Minister signalling his intention to restrict it further, despite not seeming to know how many people came through the family reunification process last year. That is to name but a few of the issues, and I will come back to each of them in more detail. These are not minor oversights. They are the core safeguards of the Bill, which are now being promised through later amendments. Amendments that will reshape major parts of the Bill are being withheld until Committee Stage when they will face minimal scrutiny, if any. The Minister presented those omissions almost as an invitation for us to collaborate but I do not believe that for a second. It just looks like homework that was left undone. This is one of the most consequential Bills in decades and we are being asked to pass it through our legislative process in pieces and without the transparency and accountability it demands. That is insulting. We are debating a Bill that will reshape how Ireland treats people at their most vulnerable and we are doing it in the shadow of a system so broken that the courts have had to intervene. In 2024, the High Court found that the Government had breached its basic human rights obligations by failing to provide even minimal accommodation to people seeking protection. That decision has since been overturned by the Court of Appeal but the matter is now before the Supreme Court. The question of whether the State breached the fundamental right to dignity is still unresolved at the highest level of our justice system. While that question hangs in the balance, the Minister has brought forward a Bill that doubles down on a system that is already broken and found wanting. The International Protection Bill is needed to transpose the EU migration asylum pact but let us not rewrite history. The Government made a choice to opt in. The Social Democrats voted against that decision, not because there was not an urgent need for reform in our international protection system but because we had serious concerns about the human rights safeguards, the impact on the common travel area and Ireland rushing into alignment with an EU system, all while our own system is so deeply broken. Almost two years later, none of those issues have been resolved. The question is whether this Bill builds a system that is lawful, rights compliant and capable of being trusted. On that test, it does not just fall short but fails completely. To go into the substance of that, in the area of legal counselling one of the most consistent and serious criticism raised during pre-legislative scrutiny concerned access to legal advice and representation. The general scheme repeatedly referred to "legal counselling". The Bill defines "legal assistance" and "legal representation", yet "legal counselling" is left almost entirely undefined. It is referenced once but explained nowhere. That is a choice. Legal counselling is not a concept recognised in Irish law. There is no clarity on who provides it, what standards apply, what qualifications are required or what recourse exists when it fails. Today, thanks to incredible journalism, Shamim Malekmian at the Dublin Inquirer found, through a freedom of information request, that officials were actively considering using chatbots and digital tools to deliver this undefined legal counselling. There is no better example of stripping away the humanity of the process than potentially using chatbots. We are talking about people fleeing persecution, trauma or war arriving to a country they believe will treat them with care and being met, not by a solicitor or interpreter, not even by a trained caseworker, but, potentially, by an AI chatbot. That should alarm us all. The notion that a vulnerable person at the outset of a protection process could be guided - or misguided - by an automated system with no legal training requirements, professional accountability or statutory safeguards feels dystopian rather than protective. In the Minister's response, I would like him to confirm if the potential for the use of artificial intelligence is being left open. Is that why legal counselling remains undefined? When it comes to detention, we have known since pre-legislative scrutiny on the Bill how significantly it expands the State's detention powers, including in the context of border and return procedures. This Bill confirms what stakeholders have warned for months. It remains vague on where and under what conditions people will be detained and what inspection and oversight their detention will be subject to. Concerns have been raised about people with serious medical needs, the lack of clarity around inspection regimes and the potential use of inappropriate locations. If the State is to deprive people of their liberty, it has a legal obligation to spell out in primary legislation the legal basis, conditions and safeguards. This Bill does not do that. It gives the State more power first and promises clarity later. That is not how deprivation of liberty should ever be legislated for. What is most disturbing is what this Bill does in relation to children. For the first time in Irish law, it allows a child to be detained because of their migration status. Yes, there has been a slight improvement on the general scheme but only because the time limit is now 12 hours. On the principle, that line has never been crossed before and the Ombudsman for Children has said the detention of a child due to their migration status can never be justified. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is clear that it is always a violation of rights and is never in a child's best interest. The EU migration pact sets minimum standards but it does not require us to detain children. It also does not stop us from going further to protect them. That was a choice. The Minister chose to cross a line this country has always refused to cross. He chose to remove the prohibition on child detention from our law and replace it with legal permission. At a time when the world is watching in horror the detention of school children at borders in the United States, our Government is choosing to make that possible here. The Bill establishes an independent monitoring mechanism and a chief inspector of asylum border procedures. In principle, that is welcome but independence is not achieved by branding. A reading of the Bill confirms serious concerns about the mechanism's independence, scope and effectiveness. The chief inspector is appointed by the Government and can be removed where, in the opinion of Government, that is in the best interest of the State. That standard does not apply to genuinely independent oversight bodies in this country because real oversight requires independence from the Executive, not dependence on it. Worse still, the chief inspector's remit is narrowly confined to designated border facilities. There is no explicit statutory obligation to investigate deaths or serious harm, there is no power to initiate civil proceedings, and the Minister retains the power to redact reports before they are laid before the House. That is not robust oversight. Only weeks ago, the Inspector of Prisons raised strikingly similar concerns about the erosion of real independence and transparency in our prison system, where inspections are limited, reports are delayed and access is controlled. That is a clear pattern. This Government wants the appearance of accountability without any of the inconvenience that comes with it. When it comes to children and minors, especially those arriving alone, the Bill remains deeply flawed. We are talking about one of the most vulnerable cohorts in the international protection system yet, as drafted, this Bill makes them even more vulnerable because the safeguards promised in the EU pact for the best interests of the child have not been transposed. There are unresolved concerns about age assessment, compressed timelines and a lack of clarity on who even makes these determinations. There is a real risk that children may be wrongly assessed as adults and routed into accelerated or border procedures. Once that happens, the consequences are immediate and severe. They include loss of child-specific protections, exposures to detention and a real risk of removal before errors can be corrected. At the very least, we should expect that these children are visible, protected and properly recognised in every part of our statutory framework. This Bill does not meet that standard, and no amount of rushed implementation excuses that failure. This Bill completely reshapes the appeals systems, embedding a presumption against oral hearings and vastly expanding accelerated border procedures. While I do acknowledge changes since the general scheme such that appeals officers may order an oral hearing where necessary, which is a modest improvement on the general scheme, this appears to remain discretionary. This discretion matters. The removal of a guaranteed oral hearing significantly weakens the fairness of the process. For many applicants, especially those with trauma or limited documentation, an oral hearing is their only real chance to explain their case in person, respond to doubts, clarity and misunderstandings, and actually be heard. Without that, the process risks becoming mechanical, impersonal and prone to error. At the same time, appeals are not automatically suspended for all applicants. People may be removed unless they successfully make a separate request to remain. In a system this complex, with weakened access to legal advice, again, that is never a safeguard. We are also discussing all of these vast sweeping changes in the context of a system bursting at the seams that has been left without adequate staffing and resources for years. How exactly will all these enormous new measures be funded? So many of these assessments are mandatory under EU law. They need to be resourced adequately to be in any way meaningful. The Bill significantly expands mandatory medical and vulnerability assessments, as required under the EU pact, but it gives very little clarity on how the State will actually deliver those assessments. During the Oireachtas joint committee's pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme, front-line healthcare representatives warned that the current system does not have the capacity to cope with the scale of clients and accelerated timelines envisoned by the new legislation. Safetynet's evidence, grounded in daily clinical practice, showed that within guaranteed access to healthcare professionals, including for vulnerability and medical checks, this Bill risks leaving both physical and mental health needs unaddressed. Drills such as medical legal assessments, which are essential for certain claims, are already beyond existing capacity unless resourced properly. The justice committee's report endorsed these concerns and recommended that screening centres be adequately resourced, with proper access to healthcare, and that health checks should go beyond a one-off examination and should allow for follow-up when necessary. In other words, people tasked with delivering these evaluations said they cannot do what the Bill expects without major investment and planning, yet this Bill offers neither clarity nor commitment on funding, staffing or integration with existing public services. The Government's text is entirely silent on how those crucial health assessments will be delivered in practice. In the area of family reunification, I will speak about how this Bill has been sold and how the Minister has used family reunification as a distraction. It makes up a tiny fraction of protection applications yet it is being treated like a central problem. There is no evidence of rising numbers. In fact, applications fell by 31% last year but still the Minister has chosen to focus the public debate here, manufacturing a crisis that does not exist at all. Worse still, he has deliberately conflated refugee family reunification, which is a basic right in international and Irish law, with other reunification migration schemes. The Bill does not set out the changes. It simply refers back to the pact and we are told the rest will come by amendment. However, the Minister has already signalled his intention of a three-year wait, financial requirements and more hurdles, delays and suffering for people who have already endured enough. Some 669 people availed of that scheme last year. They were, without question, wives, husbands and children and, in the case of unaccompanied minors, they were a brother, sister or parent. Siblings accounted for 45 people. That is where the Minister has chosen to focus his attention. There are so many aspects of this Bill that are cruel. We will bring forward amendments. The Minister is offering collaboration. We have yet to see if that will come to pass.

In his opening comments, the Minister said that the Government fundamentally believes in the right to claim asylum, yet, this legislation brings us in exactly the opposite direction as a State. That has been the case since we have seen this Government take office, where we have simply seen an attack on international protection as a concept, and language and rhetoric that demonises people in their most vulnerable moment, despite our history and our own experience as a people. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Minister is jumping on this opportunity. We did not have to take on all of the modules of the EU migration and asylum pact. We know that. We were an exception, and this Government chose to do it. Not only that, it is choosing to interpret it in such a way that this legislation that will make our system one of the most severe in Europe. It is not surprising to me because, for multiple governments now, we have seen that they, as governments, have had to be dragged kicking and screaming or pushed by the courts to recognise any rights within the international protection space. We have never, ever got to a point of meeting either our domestic or international obligations, and we certainly have never got to a humane and dignified system that recognises the difficulty people experience when they are in this system. Instead, under the banner of efficiency, speed and fairness, we are seeing a system that is going to dehumanise people, detain them and further take away their basic rights because that is the direction in which we are headed. The letter and the spirit of this legislation are about curbing the right to claim asylum. Even if the Minister does not believe us in the Opposition, he should believe civil society. There are very well-documented and well-articulated concerns, which include that there are significant gaps remaining in this legislation that undermine the scrutiny within the legislative process. We know that because, for example, there is now nothing remaining on family reunification and that is just not good enough with such an important piece of legislation. The detention of an unaccompanied child will be permitted under this legislation. That is absolutely incredible. This Bill creates overarching and disproportionate power of the Minister across the protection process. The information provision to the applicant is unclear. Many recommendations of the justice committee are not implemented, and key safeguards are still absent. Age assessment provisions are unclear and missing key principles of child age-assessment safeguarding. Vulnerability assessments are only preliminary and not ongoing. Oral appeals are allowed only if deemed necessary. There is a rake of concerns coming through from the experts in this field who deal with international protection on a daily basis. The reality is that we do not have to be like this. We could go in the other direction. We might look at Spain. It is naturalising people who have been there. It is welcoming the concept of international protection and what it does for an ageing and growing population, which is exactly what we should be doing.

I echo my colleagues' concerns in relation to this Bill. I will make some broad points and question the nature of what is being brought forward, the Government's approach, its language around migration, the words that have been used, what it says and what has been done. I do feel, and I know colleagues share this, a deep concern about the direction this Government has taken. There is an element of what feels and looks like performative cruelty, that is, to be seen to be hard on immigration in order to, essentially, capitulate to people who are making some deeply disingenuous and wrong claims about immigration and asylum seekers. We might look at what migration and immigration has done for this country. I was talking to a number of asylum seekers this week who are in direct provision. Does the Minister know what they are doing? They are working in construction. They are going out every day and building the homes we need. The Government, with these policies, could very well deport these people because it says it wants to take this hard line on immigration and asylum seekers. It is deeply disappointing. Asylum seekers up and down the country are working to provide care for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They are building our homes. Yet, what we are seeing from the Government is their demonisation. I have spoken to a number of lone-parent mothers who were living in direct provision and who talked about the eviction letters that were going out. The Government is evicting people from direct provision to forms of emergency accommodation that are not even being classed as homelessness. They are being ripped out of the communities where they are building links and integrating. I ask the Minister to stop this demonisation. The Tánaiste said he was concerned about the level of population growth and that it could damage social cohesion. What is damaging social cohesion is the performative cruelty that is, in essence, trying to take pressure off the Government for its failures and put it onto vulnerable people who have come to this country, who want to contribute and are contributing, and who are part of our communities. We need to take a different direction.

This is a subject on which I have been back and forth. I would say I am generally in favour of immigration. It has done this country almost nothing but good. When I think of the Ireland in which I grew up in the 1990s, it was homogenous and, by extension, quite restricted. There were no foreigners to speak of in Ireland, certainly in the early 1990s, and the homogeneity of our society meant we did not have the experience of multiculturalism and all the positive things that come with it. I say that in relation to immigration because migration had not even come onto the horizon at that stage. Some people talk about migration and immigration as if they are the same thing but it is really important to distinguish between the two. When I talk about immigration, I am referring to people who come here under a work permit system to take up positions, not to avail in any way of supports from the State but 100% to contribute to it. As has been noted in this House on a number of occasions, we need those people. They are keeping our hospitals and restaurants open, staffing our hotels and contributing at every level in their communities. As a country that is in some ways a victim of its own success in that we have full employment, we need people from other countries to come here to do jobs, work with us and contribute to our economy. Of course, they are also paying taxes, spending their income here and contributing at all kinds of economic levels, as well as solving employment problems for employers and companies all over the country. Immigration has been an unqualified success for Ireland. In fact, the problem with immigration is the slowness in granting work permits and in responding to the needs of particular sectors for skilled workers in a specific area. That is another subject and another day's work altogether. With migration, on the other hand, we are dealing with a couple of issues. First, we have our international obligations. I have always supported what we do as part of the international community to recognise that just as our citizens in the past went to other countries seeking shelter, support and asylum during tough times here, we must play our part in welcoming people from other countries to Ireland, giving them shelter and succour and allowing them to live the lives we would like everybody in the world to be able to live. I also recognise that we cannot accept everybody from elsewhere into this country. There is a balancing act that must be done all the time. In this regard, one of the issues I have found myself discussing, particularly with Danish colleagues in the context of their Presidency of the European Council, is what the Danish Government has done in regard to migration specifically. Interestingly, Denmark has a social democratic Government and it is probably at variance with many of the social democrats in this Chamber on this issue. When I first heard what the Danish Social Democrats Government was doing, I had my reservations about it. However, I have had a lot of conversations with Social Democrats members of the Folketing who have explained why they have pursued what I would say is a fairly hard-line policy on migration. We often use the term "social cohesion" perhaps a little loosely but they recognised the problem that there was a growing far-right movement within Denmark. There are still problems, of course, which is something every country is dealing with. Fortunately, Ireland does not have any real mandate for far-right people or people expressing that ideology. The Danish Social Democrats were concerned about that ideology getting a grip and, so, what they did was try to get out ahead of it. That is how they would explain it. They sought to neutralise the arguments being made by far-right politicians to ensure they could not use migration as a tool to get themselves into elected office and into positions of power and influence where they could continue to propagate what is, in essence, a racist ideology. I understand why they did that and I have been back and forth on the question of whether we should do something similar from the point of view of acknowledging that we, too, have certain people, albeit a minority and without a mandate, expressing those views within our polity, on social media and in other media. However, I also think there is a danger that if we just do their job for them, then there is no point in keeping them out. Therefore, I come back to the point that we must constantly work to balance up these issues. It remains a topic I grapple with because in my constituency of Dún Laoghaire, the experience we have had with migration has been universally positive. Of the IPAS centres within the constituency, the one on Eblana Avenue in Dún Laoghaire town is substandard. It is solely occupied by single men, who have not received the respect or treatment from IPAS that they deserve and who are living in a substandard building. Notwithstanding that, they continue to contribute to the community in Dún Laoghaire. The problems many local people foresaw with their arrival simply have not materialised. In Blackrock, where there are two IPAS centres, albeit right next to each other, the families living there have contributed so much to the community. They are part of the Tidy Towns organisations and have joined local clubs. They are contributing in so many ways, including working in local businesses. A larger centre has opened on Merrion Road in the Minister's constituency, although I would submit it is more directly connected to mine. In terms of residential areas, Booterstown is probably closer to me. Again, at that centre, Merrion House, none of the problems foreseen by some people locally have materialised. Just over 100 people are living there, which is a small number really. The problems I foresaw when that development came to my attention were problems with education, healthcare and, as raised by others, in terms of what the people living there would do all day. I will come back to that third point momentarily. Schools in the area are delighted to see them. In fact, there has been an unqualified welcome for them from the principals of primary and secondary schools in the area. They add diversity to their classes, bulk up their numbers and make a contribution. The schools are delighted to have them. Regarding healthcare, I have raised this issue a number of times with the Minister's colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, and I know there is an international protection medical service serving that centre. However, there is a real problem with access to GPs in south Dublin. The residents get medical cards, which is all well and good, but GP practices in Dún Laoghaire will not take medical card patients because they simply do not have the capacity. That is a problem but the dedicated health service solves it to a certain extent. On the question of what the residents would do all day, it simply is not an issue. We should remember these are people coming from places where they cannot live their lives - war-torn places and places where they are discriminated against because of who they are, whether on the basis of their sexual orientation, ethnicity or whatever it might be. They come here looking to make a new life and to contribute in whatever way they can. Let us welcome them in to do that. In fact, the issue in this regard is that we do not let them work early enough. They should not have to wait six months before they can work. Let us allow them to contribute now because that is what they want to do. None of them wants to be sitting in an IPAS centre thumb twiddling and trying to find something to occupy the time every day. What a waste of human capital that is at a time when we need them to contribute, which is what they want to do. Let us solve that problem. The Bill does nothing, for example, to address the right of international protection applicants to work here. I hope this is something the Minister will consider changing by way of amendments at a later Stage. It would be easy to make changes to employment legislation under the guise of this Bill to allow people who are here for whatever length of time, and before a determination has been made on their application, to work. Perhaps the most important action we can take for international protection applicants here is to invest in the International Protection Office to ensure their applications are processed in a timely way. The most unfair thing is when people come here and wait years for a determination and, even worse, then get a determination that goes against them. They have built a life here. They may have met a partner here and started a family and now they are being told they have to leave, when this country might be all their children know. That is unreasonable. I welcome the elements of the Bill that seek to change that and speed up the process. I also welcome the EU migration pact because it equips us with the tools we need to speed up that process. Although it might be controversial in some respects, it is really important, if it is going to deliver for people, that we use it. In that regard, I do not have a problem with the changes proposed to the time period within which people are allowed to apply for citizenship or naturalisation. The notion you would come here under a work permit to work in this country as part of an immigration scheme and you have to wait five years to apply, whereas if you come here under international protection you have to wait three, is not right. It is not fair to disadvantage people who have come here under an immigration scheme as opposed to those who have an international protection status, so let us even that out. If it is to be five years I do not really have a problem with that. I have a problem with the family reunification aspect. It is miserly and unfair. I do not think it is going to achieve very much in terms of changing the environment or in any way dissuading people from coming here. When people leave or flee their home country seeking international protection they are not putting together an Excel spreadsheet of the terms, benefits and opportunities in the countries they might end up in. They go to wherever they can to avoid the persecution they were suffering. I doubt there are people coming here thinking the family reunification benefits in Ireland are fantastic and for that reason they will go there. It does not work that way. As such, I do not really see the need for us to tell those people they are going to have to wait three years. Where before they had to apply within 12 months, now they have to wait over three years. I do not appreciate that, do not think it is necessary and do not think it should be in the Bill. I ask the Minister to consider that on Committee Stage. I also have a concern about the legal counsellors provision and the provision of legal counsel. "Legal counsellors" is not a term I understand. I understand what it means in plain English, but I do not understand whether it means qualified lawyers in Ireland. One of the criticisms I have of the International Protection Office and the way it administered the legal scheme for people coming here was it did not properly engage barristers or solicitors. The office aimed at junior members of the profession, especially barristers as they are self-employed and they had the capacity to do this work, and it took advantage of them in no uncertain terms. The office required them to train for free and often for more than a day at a time. If they did not do a report within a certain period they had to retrain despite their being highly qualified individuals. They were taken advantage of by the IPO and it is a shame on the office that it did that. Is this a further step down this road? Is this again what we are doing? We are trying to circumvent the fact we have a coterie of highly qualified, highly capable professional people who can provide a service. Is it the case the State simply does not want to pay for it or wants to avoid paying for it? It should not try to avoid this. In the same way we would provide proper legal representation for people before a court in family matters under legal aid schemes - or for people accused of a crime, for that matter - we should be looking after people who come here to bring international protection applications with proper legal representation. I do not know what legal counsellors are. I do not know if they are lawyers and I do not know if they will be up to the pace on that. I have heard quite a lot of rhetoric here and do not agree with it all. I suspect I am more sympathetic to some of it than many of my Government colleagues but the reality is that we have obligations and we need to make good on those obligations. We do good things but we also do things that are substandard. Rather than trying to implement things that will not make a difference but will make life harder for international protection applicants, we should be looking at this Bill as an opportunity to streamline a system that delivers for us as a country and, God forgive me, as an economy, but also for the people who are coming here seeking and deserving our protection.

The Irish, across the centuries, have been forced to emigrate. We know the pain of having to say goodbye to loved ones at bus stations, airports and ports. In the summer of 1988 and having graduated from third level, I, like thousands of others, boarded a plane at Shannon Airport with a tourist visa and headed to New York city. I worked there for 18 months and returned to Ireland. Unfortunately, due the policies of the Government of the time unemployment was rampant. As I was unable to access employment in Ireland I secured a job in London, where I spent nine years. I was fortunate to be able to come home. I am sure there are many more Irish people across the world who would love to return but see the housing crisis and ever-rising cost of living as barriers. We must do more to encourage and help them to return. However, there is no doubt our international processing and enforcement needs reform. The delays in processing applications and appeals do not serve the State or the applicants well. We need a system that is fit for purpose. Those who are entitled to be here should be processed quickly so they can begin their new life and integrate into the local community. Equally, those who enter the country and are deemed to not be entitled to stay must be processed quickly. The Bill is designed to sign up to the EU migration and asylum pact in its totality but this is not in our interest. It goes against the recommendations of the Oireachtas justice committee and hands over power on migration to the European Union, thereby ignoring the unique challenges we face in this State, including the Border and the common travel area with Britain, which is a non-EU entity. While we have the right to opt in to and out of legislation governing the areas of freedom, security and justice on a case-by-case basis the Government is instead opting to plough straight into the adoption of all aspects of the pact. This erosion of our sovereignty does not serve the people of Ireland. The implementation of this Bill will hinder our ability as a State to make decisions on the issue of migration. The people should decide ourselves how to do this, not the EU.

Ireland is an independent, sovereign state and should not be beholden to Europe on matters we can resolve ourselves. It has been the attitude of successive governments that we want to be the best person in the class when it comes to the EU. Ireland’s position is unique and has its own very particular challenges. We are in the EU but we are not in the Schengen area and we are part of a common travel area with a state that is outside the European Union. That is why this one-size-fits-all approach to migration and asylum is not in our best interest. There are many problems with the international protection system in this State but most of them are of the Government’s making. Decisions are taking way too long, appeals are taking too long, deportations are not being enforced and there is massive profiteering from the provision of inappropriate IPAS accommodation. Fixing these problems does not require us to sign up to the EU migration and asylum pact, however. Ireland is a small, neutral country with an independent foreign policy. We should not allow the EU to dictate which conflicts we should take people seeking refuge from. This should be a matter for an Irish government to decide. I am on the justice committee and as I have said numerous times about different legislation I believe this Bill is being rushed to fit in with a timeline set down by the EU and agreed by the Government. It is disappointing the Government did not accept the unanimously agreed cross-party recommendation from the justice committee to reconsider opting out of the majority of the pact. This is very regrettable. There are also serious concerns that neither Tusla nor the civil legal aid system will be able to cope with the demands they will face under this legislation.

I cannot remember the last time a government brought forward a Bill that was so universally condemned by human rights organisations. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has said there are "substantial gaps and ambiguities ... [in the Bill] in areas that directly affect the rights and safety of ... vulnerable applicants such as children and victims of trafficking". It also said that without clear, enforceable safeguards, which do not exist at present, the State’s human rights and equality obligations will not be met. The civil society Coalition on the EU Migration Pact is made up of organisations like the Irish Refugee Council, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, LGBT Ireland and the Irish Network Against Racism and it has said, "This legislation will be a stain on Ireland’s international reputation, and it undermines the very core of what being Irish means". Everyone out there should know that in this Bill Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and your friendly, local, right-wing Independent TD are all legislating for the detention of children. Shame on them all. It should not take human rights organisations to tell us detention is never, under any circumstances, in the best interests of innocent children, but the human rights organisations are forced to scream this and still the Government does not care. Reading through the Bill and reading the reaction to it something I could not fully understand at the time makes sense, namely, why the Government shamefully put its name to a statement led by Denmark before Christmas requesting the application of the European Convention on Human Rights to migrants be reviewed. In other words, these human rights are not human rights at all but will be selectively applied rights. The changes demanded here are so far-reaching that it is not really a review of the application of the convention that is being demanded but the wholesale disapplication of human rights to migrants. The socialist Tony Benn famously pointed out the way a government treats refugees is an indication of how it would treat the rest of us if it thought it could get away with it. That is precisely what is indicated by this Bill. It is a frontal assault on human rights. In this case, it starts with asylum seekers, including young children, but if we tolerate this, our children will be next. The Minister is leading the charge in attacking the legal basis of the limited rights and limited legal equality that protect ordinary working class people and oppressed groups in this State, but internationally, he will be aware he is no leader. Internationally, he is following the lead of Donald Trump and the global far right. We have seen with our eyes in the US where this goes. First, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, came for illegal immigrants. Now, it is executing US citizens in broad daylight on the streets of America. Protesters are especially at risk, criminalised as terrorists and allowed to starve to the point of death in Britain, brutalised and hit with trumped up charges by An Garda Síochána here. It is no coincidence that this appalling Bill goes hand in hand with plans to create additional covert surveillance and interception powers for An Garda Síochána, all in the name of national security, a term the Minister's Department refuses to define, presumably so it can be interpreted as broadly as it likes. I will go into some of the worst aspects of this Bill in more detail. First, it introduces a new system of border detention to be imposed even on the children of international protection applicants. People Before Profit is fundamentally opposed to this. Migrants are not criminals. Their children are not criminals. It should go without saying that they do not deserve to be treated like criminals simply for exercising their human right and legal right to apply for asylum. Second, the Bill fundamentally undermines the right to legal representation by providing only for access to so-called legal counselling. What "legal counselling" means, we do not know. It is not defined by the Bill, but we do know for certain that it does not mean access to proper legal representation because the Bill clearly does not provide for that. Third, it imposes a series of much tighter legal timeframes without providing the resources for them to be met. It is no wonder that the Legal Aid Board is raising the alarm about its ability to cope. This apparent negligence is, of course, deliberate. The Government is on purpose creating a system that will not be fair in order to deport as many international protection applicants as possible, as quickly as possible and to hell wit the consequences. The Minister knows what the consequences will be. Even under the previous system, applicants have been deported to their deaths. In 2014, Mohamed Sleyum Ali was deported from Ireland to Tanzania where he was attacked and left to die within hours of arriving. Last June, a Congolese human rights activist disappeared after being forcibly deported and handed over to the authorities at Kinshasa airport by An Garda Síochána. This Bill will lead to more refugees being deported and then tortured, disappeared and killed. The Bill even allows for this to happen while appeals are still under way. Fourth, all provisions on family reunification have been removed from the Bill. The Minister may say they have not been finalised yet, but that is completely unacceptable. They are some of the most important protections and must be included in primary legislation so they can be scrutinised by the Oireachtas and vindicated by the courts. Family reunification is too important to be left to ministerial regulations or departmental policy. It is a question of fundamental human rights. This underlines the point that the rights of children are being trampled on and ignored by the Government. It does it to children with additional needs, teenagers with mental health problems, children exploited by big tech and used for child sex abuse imagery, and vulnerable children who fall through the cracks. It is doing it again in this Bill. It should not be allowed to get away with it.

I am the first to say that reform of our international protection system is necessary, not simply because of the changes at EU level, but because there is international agreement and universal agreement that we need a system that is fit for purpose. I say that because I saw first hand the consequences of years of compounded bad policy decisions, along with a failure to recognise the nature of modern asylum and plan for a system that responds to the reality of asylum today. I want to make a genuine effort to be fair because managing this is one of the hardest tasks in politics today. The asylum and migration pact, though imperfect, is important in that it ensures the whole EU works together on these issues. That is what I argued for in government and what I continue to believe today. Going it alone, as the UK did, solves no problems; it only makes things worse. However, how this reform is implemented and what wider reforms are being brought forward at the same time is where we need to be extremely careful. We have the benefit in Ireland of being able to learn from the experiences of other jurisdictions, such as the UK, about what is effective and fair, but also what does not work. Speaking objectively, some elements of the Bill are needed. The Government is attempting with this Bill to address the two decades of policy failure that led to an international protection system that left people waiting for a decision about their status for years. It was a system that buckled when Ireland started to experience the same number of people seeking international protection as other European countries, compounded by the war in Ukraine at the same time. It was a nightmare confluence of factors for which our State was utterly unprepared. Therefore, we arrive today at this Bill. I acknowledge the efforts of the Minister's officials in what has been a complex drafting process. However, given the tone of the debates around migration - the heightened context under which this comes before us - it is the duty of Opposition TDs to ask whether we are solely advancing solutions to real world problems or we are bringing forth policies that have more to do with playing to a particular political line than improving our system. If it is the latter, what are the consequences for those this law claims to serve? What are the consequences for our country of focusing on areas where problems do not exist, like with draconian family reunification changes, but failing to focus on the acute problems, such as those in reception and accommodation? I need to call out the persistent efforts across the Minister's party to muddy the waters about the approach taken to these issues by the last Government. The Taoiseach persistently says that he is glad migration is back in the Department of justice. It is worrying that he was under the illusion that migration was not the responsibility of the Department of Justice in the last Government, particularly considering he was Taoiseach for two and a half years during that period. For the record, in the last Government, responsibility for immigration control, the International Protection Office, the refugee appeals tribunal, decisions on visas, family reunification policy - responsibility for every one of those areas - remained with the Department of Justice. The one area that was removed to the Department of children was responsibility for accommodation for those seeking international protection. As the Minister will be aware, that has now returned to the Department of justice. Now we are seeing a series of changes being loudly flagged in the media, including family reunification being tightened for no real reason, a diminution of legal advices that tests the limits of established due process, and fully desk-based reviews with no oral hearings. In today's Bill, some of that is formalised into new structures that look to weigh the balance against someone accessing refuge here. That may be the signal the Government wants to send from today's debate, but it is storing up new problems for the future and it penalises people in desperate situations for no real policy benefit. We absolutely need reform. We need decisions to be made more effectively and quickly. I acknowledge that, following investment and reform made under the last Government, the International Protection Office is now delivering its decisions on status in a far more timely way. However, we have to separate the policy we need from the policy that plays well in political theatre. That means adopting the pact and making our decisions more efficient, but it also calls for the Government to preserve basic legal rights and to put the same relentless focus on the accommodation side and moving away as quickly as possible from private providers. It calls for a border procedure that does not involve the incarceration of minors and their guardians. The cold house approach, the kind of hostile environment beloved of the UK Conservative Party, simply does not work. It is not supported by the evidence. Look at the post-Brexit migration numbers in the UK. The Minister knows as well as I the overriding factors determining international protection numbers in Ireland are decisions made at the Cabinet table in Downing Street. Right now, the numbers are lower. The relentless pressure I faced in sourcing accommodation has lessened and openings are consequently fewer. This is all because we have a moderate, co-operative Government in London, but what happens if Reform UK wins the next UK general election? What happens if the Minister faces Richard Tice as home secretary? What would have happened if the Starmer Government had pushed forward its mandatory ID cards policy? Which UK land border, which an entire peace process depends on being completely open, would have been the first to see an impact? With the lower arrival numbers, the Minister's Government has been given a moment to act decisively. While our international protection decision system must be more efficient and that will reduce numbers overall, if the Government fails to take advantage of the lower arrival numbers to change the accommodation system and to begin that move away from the expensive private providers of international protection accommodation, the Minister and his Government will find themselves hopelessly exposed when some international event outside of their control creates the next wave of migration across Europe.

Without a doubt, the system we have had to date has not been fit for purpose and there have been several problems outlined here on that. The delays in the system have not been fair to anybody, particularly genuine and successful applicants. We need to be able to deal much more quickly with people who are fleeing war, persecution or famine. We need to be able to help them. If the faster processing times that have been set out happen, I will welcome the 12 weeks and the further 12 weeks on the second appeal. That will benefit successful applicants. Unsuccessful applicants, obviously, will have to leave. The current system is way too slow and there are examples of people waiting years within the system. The family reunification implications in the Bill are cruel and excessive, particularly in immediate families. We have to recognise that people - mothers and fathers - are separated from their children. I appeal to the Minister to go back on that. I am not too sure where the ask came from to put in that three-year clause. We have to be fair about this. We have people who may be working here in Ireland who are separated from their children and their partners, wives, husbands or whatever else. That is a cruel system. Imagine any of us being exposed to that. That is not fair and I appeal to the Minister to change it and to make it fairer, particularly for immediate families. That is the big point I wish to make here today. On return and departure, I want a fair, efficient and rules-based system. If something is not rules-based, it does not work. I do not have a problem with the rules being implemented once they are done in a fair and proper manner. The return and departure of unsuccessful applicants is not verified. At the Committee of Public Accounts two years ago, I asked the Secretary General of the Department what happened when somebody fails all the appeals processes, including through the courts. I was told that they send a letter to the last known address. How do you verify what is going to happen there? These people are living in rental accommodation much of the time, so much of it is temporary by nature. They may have moved on. There needs to be verification where somebody fails. Where somebody is successful, we have to make sure we look after them and they are treated properly, but where somebody fails the system and the appeals, we have to be able to verify. We can verify that less than half of those who have failed over the past three years have left the State. That is not a system that is working or is fit for purpose. You cannot look after the genuine cases if you are going to have a system that works like that. The resources are not there to cater for them and they are not being targeted for the help or supports they need. I do not have a problem with the approach being taken in respect of those convicted of serious crime. If we are being honest, we must accept that the right to stay can be terminated for people who are convicted of serious crime. We have to be careful when it comes to the issue of unaccompanied minors because children who are coming from dangerous countries, after fleeing a dangerous situation, must be cared for. However, my understanding is that many of these children are being brought to the front door of Tusla and being left there to be looked after. Tusla has to try to arrange bed and breakfast for them and to supervise these arrangements. Let us think about this for a minute and try to work it out. Unless there has been a change recently, this is what is happening and it is not acceptable. We must have a better way of dealing with these cases. If an unaccompanied child or minor arrives from a safe country, the safe country needs to be contacted to say, "We have a child from your country here" and they need to be safely returned into the hands of safe authorities. If they are from a country where there is any risk of war, persecution, famine, harm or exploitation coming to that child, they should not be returned. Let me be clear about that. On the issue of the IPAS centres, the Day report has been gathering dust for a good few years. We know it recommended that large centres be owned, run and controlled by the State. That has not happened. There is money being made and some people have got very wealthy off the back of this. Being honest, there is rampant profiteering and all sorts of chancers who have made huge money off the back of it and have got very well off in a short period. We need to move to those facilities recommended in the Day report. As far as I know, the only one we have made progress with is the Citywest centre and I welcome that. We have to recognise that England, Scotland and Wales - three foreign countries - are not in the European Union but we have a common travel area with them. They are outside the EU, so this EU agreement means nothing. As the previous speaker said, if there is an extremely right-wing government in England, which is highly possible in the form of Mr. Farage and his pals, we could wind up in a very difficult situation here. We need to reach binding agreements with Britain as regards what happens. It is accepted that the vast majority come over the artificial border on this island; that is a fact we cannot ignore. It is a difficult one to deal with but it has to be dealt with by the Department of foreign affairs while there is a friendly or reasonable enough government in Britain, even if it may be criticised in other ways. We need to be doing it while the Labour Party Government is in place because, my God, if Reform UK is elected into government there, it will change it. We need to help people who are successful applicants and those who have a reasonable case to put forward. Those who cannot obviously cannot stay. We need to help people to integrate with education, training and work. We need a fair, efficient and rules-based system. I appeal to the Minister to revisit the family reunification piece. That is a cruel proposal, and it needs to be revised.

I welcome the opportunity this evening to discuss the International Protection Bill, which will make Ireland's asylum processing system fairer not only for those who wish to come here but also for those who are already here. Most of us in the Chamber can agree on the enormous benefits that migration brings to our country. The Ireland of 2026 is a diverse, multiethnic society where people can celebrate and share their cultures free from fear, and long may that last. The Ireland of 2026 has also bucked historic trends. It is no longer a place that people are forced to emigrate from due to conflicts, but a safe harbour for those fleeing global conflicts. We must all realise we have a duty to those who come to our shores seeking protection. At present, our asylum and international protection system is not adequately prepared to carry out this duty effectively. If a person comes to Ireland seeking international protection and is then faced with up to a year and half waiting before their application is decided upon, they are essentially left in an uneasy limbo. While applicants are languishing in a system that was not built to cope with today's demands, they are forced to build their futures on sand. The delays caused by this cumbersome process, in turn, do a disservice to us all. Last year, just over 13,000 people sought asylum in Ireland. While this was down on the figure for 2024, it was still substantially higher than the numbers arriving a decade ago. In the face of renewed pressures on our asylum-processing system, comprehensive change is required. The State can and must do better. With this Bill, I firmly believe it will. The Bill will bring Ireland in line with the European pact on migration and asylum, provide a firm, fair and consistent approach across the Continent, and streamline and speed up our current processes. A common approach, as envisaged in the migration and asylum pact, will reduce the pressure currently on our processing system by curbing the secondary movement of people through the EU. I also welcome the proposal for a new border procedure with a three-month time limit for decisions and new institutional arrangements for international protection decisions and appeals. Whereas, currently, people applying for international protection can expect to wait an average of 29 months to process through the system, these new procedures will bring that down to nine months, which is a marked improvement. Whether someone is granted asylum or not, this proposed system will let him or her get on with his or her life sooner rather than later. The State currently faces a cost of over €120,000 per applicant processed in the international protection system as it currently operates. However, the projected future costs based on the proposed streamlining measures will make that cost less than €50,000 per applicant, which is a 60% reduction in the current cost to the State. I am of the firm belief that this money is better spent building tomorrow rather than stalling today.

I acknowledge the work that has gone into this Bill. There are two issues I want to raise in respect of it, both of which the Minister is very familiar with. When Simon Harris was elected Taoiseach in April 2024, one of the first pressing concerns he faced was what was effectively a humanitarian crisis taking place on Mount Street because of the proliferation of international protection applicants who simply did not have anywhere to reside. To cut a long story short, agencies that perhaps were not working together started working together and a system developed involving Dublin City Council, IPAS, the IPO and An Garda Síochána working hand in glove. Over the long term, because of the work of the Minister and his predecessor and the fact that we have moved IPAS back under the umbrella of the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, largely speaking, there is sufficient accommodation for international protection applicants. Yet it is still the case, and the Minister will be familiar with this, that in our own constituency, individuals arrive at Mount Street and well-meaning volunteers provide them with tents while they wait to be provided with accommodation. Very often that accommodation is found within 24 to 48 hours, yet these individuals are settled in tents in public parks in our area, which are not appropriate places for international protection applicants to be. In addition to the humanitarian crisis, this is what ultimately instigated the changes we saw. If legal change is necessary to ensure that a place can be found for an international protection applicant when he or she arrives at Mount Street at whatever hour of the day, let us make that change. If it is an administrative change that is needed, let us make that change too, because there is no longer a reasonable excuse for or logic behind why an international protection applicant should be in a tent in a public park in any area of the city. The second issue I wish to raise, which is perhaps more substantive and relevant to the Bill, is age assessment. It was reported in The Sunday Times that, in submissions on the Bill, the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality and the Minister for Health expressed misgivings regarding age assessment. I want to put on the record of the Dáil what was reported in respect of the Department of Children, Disability and Equality. What was reported was that the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality and her Department said that, given the clear legal requirements for the presumption of minority, any delay in the undertaking of the age assessment process greatly increased the serious risk of adults being placed in accommodation with unaccompanied minors. It was further noted that there do not appear to be provisions in the Bill for the undertaking of a preliminary age assessment process that may support the identification of persons falsely claiming to be minors, a number that is rising year on year. The Minister went on to say that the application of a robust and timely age assessment process that prevents the placing of adults with unaccompanied minors in State accommodation requires strong consideration and needs to be clearly addressed within the Bill's provisions. The Minister for Health's concerns related to her Department. What was reported was that she would welcome clarification of the legal basis on which medical data arising from a preliminary health assessment may be accessible to the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration or a tribunal. The Minister went on to reportedly state that she had concerns about the proposed assessments to determine the age of an applicant and that, in particular, a medical examination to determine age is not considered a reliable method of age verification and may represent a waste of health resources. There is no question that age assessment is a complex issue and there is no silver bullet to get an absolutist outcome. What is abundantly clear, and what was clear to me and every other member of the Committee of Public Accounts, is that Tusla is very concerned about the rising number of unaccompanied minors, its responsibilities relating to them and the timeliness with which age assessment referrals it makes to the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration are returned to it. I have a principal concern, which is that there is this legal obligation of assuming the person is a minor. Tusla's responsibilities are exceptionally different from those of the IPO, the statutory function of which is to assess whether the person has a valid entitlement to make an application for international protection in the first instance. The job of Tusla is to look after every child in this State irrespective of nationality. I do not think it is appropriate that, for the past number of years if not longer, unknown to many Members of this Oireachtas, the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has effectively outsourced age assessment to Tusla, notwithstanding the fact that the intention of the Oireachtas in the existing legislation has been that this role and statutory function would remain vested in the Department. The Department is effectively relying on social workers employed by Tusla who carry out these age assessments. Why is this so important? We know it is so important because the risk of adults mingling in child settings is a significant one. Members do not need me to point to recent incidents about why that is so serious. Children being placed in adult-only sections of accommodation is also a concern. It does not matter where one is from. We have an absolute obligation to look after children in this country. It is also clear that, for whatever reason, the number of unaccompanied minors seeking international protection, and I am sure the statistics are not unique to Ireland, is growing. We have a responsibility to those children. We have a responsibility to ensure that, if somebody is seeking international protection, if he or she is being handed over to Tusla, which has an additional ratio of staff or carers, he or she is actually a child and meets the requirement. It is impossible for the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration to adequately scrutinise the provisions of this Bill in the absence of draft regulations. When this Bill comes to Committee Stage, the members of the committee should have access to the regulations the Minister intends to propose. I am not a member of this committee but I think it should hear from Tusla regarding its views on the provisions because we really only have one chance to get this right. Issues arising from age assessment challenges for Tusla have been festering for a number of months if not over a year, and this is the chance to get it right, to get it right in this legislation. What is so important is that the Minister and the Department hear from the Department of Children, Disability and Equality, the Department of Health and Tusla to get this Bill right.

It is fair to say that the EU migration and asylum pact does not take into the account the issues that persist in Ireland, including the fact that we have a shared border and, unfortunately down to British jurisdiction, that means a shared border with a state and entity that is not in the European Union. That was Britain's determination not ours, but, in fairness, it has never done anything that has suited Ireland. We saw the recent near imposition of the Brit-card, an absolute defiance of logic, the peace process and all of the hard work that has been done. Let us be absolutely clear that we are dealing with this common travel area and it greatly pains me that this particular border exists in Ireland. The reason I am standing here today is that, like my colleagues, I am utterly committed to the removal of this particular border, which as we know is very porous, as do the many who have tried to cut off some of the approximately 300 border crossings. It is an impossibility. While accepting that we can do a lot better, having a fully-fledged and proper immigration system in operation in Ireland would need to remove said border and create a united Ireland. The Minister may be in a position to do more in the near future, but we really need to see a move to Irish unity and the preparations that are necessary from this particular Government. We are dealing with legislation that was agreed to by both Houses. I am deeply disappointed that the Minister and the Government did not consider the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice's recommendation that we have a determination. We could have looked at an opt-out for the considerable parts of this pact that do not suit the situation that exists in Ireland at the minute. Unfortunately, these are not the circumstances we are in. Others have spoken about the issues around the civil legal aid system and Tusla. We are talking about systems that are absolutely stretched and under pressure. We really do not see how this is going to be fit for purpose and going to work. The Minister is under pressure timewise because he has to deal with ensuring the 12 June deadline happens. I am not quite sure that all of the ducks are going to be in a row beforehand. The fact is we are talking about the further imposition of fines and infringement proceedings. There has been huge unease about international protection. That is because communities that were not communicated with very well and have lost hotels and other amenities saw an element of chaos. The Government has spoken about how it is going to remedy this. I accept that over the years it did not have the same number of people who are now applying for international protection. I also accept that people, who are here, apply for international protection and fit the criteria in the sense that they are fleeing persecution and war, should be looked after. They should not be languishing for years. Processing should happen fast, but if you do not have a right to be here, you should be gone. The Minister has put many proposals forward. We really need to see that proper and adequate procedures are in place. We have all talked about faster processing. I also want to ask him about the 12-week time limit for the first instance and appeal decisions to be completed for certain categories of applicants because he has also spoken previously of six months for the initial application and six months for appeal. We really need to get to grips with this because it is not fit for purpose.

I welcome the comments by Deputy Geoghegan about obligations to children. I am delighted to see that someone in Fine Gael is finally realising that we have obligations to children and, in particular the 6,000 homeless children in Ireland and that our obligation should be to them. Ireland's international protection system has been exploited for far too long. The problem has never been the compassion of the Irish people but the problem was the permissibility of the Irish State. The fact is we were too obliging and too quiet. We sat down, took what we were given and said nothing as if this was just the way it was and we could not do anything. There were extremely weak controls and by having weak controls, it led to abuse. There was also slow decision-making by this Administration and the previous Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Administration. Weak administration rewards incompetence and the lack of co-operation. The failure to enforce laws and return people undermines the rule of law. The measures in the Bill are serious measures. I accept that. They are the right measures to introduce but they do not go far enough. These are measures that should have been in place a long time ago. Mandatory screening is basic governance. Biometric identification is non-negotiable and non-co-operation with the State should never be an option. I previously mentioned in this House people who entered Dublin airport and when asked how they arrived in this country, which is one of the standard questions, replied: "I arrived by hot air balloon; how else do you think I got here?" That is not somebody who is interested in being a good citizen in this country. Anyone who refuses to co-operate should not be facilitated in this country. I refer to the number of people who are entering this country without a passport or any sort of identification. Thousands of those people have entered this country. When some is running and fleeing for their life and getting on a boat and arriving in Spain, Greece or Italy, which we see a lot of the time, I understand why they may not have passport on them. However, I cannot understand how someone can enter this country after flying from France or Britain because there were no direct flights from their own country without any passport or identification.

Mistakes were made in the past and we were slow to block the door. I do not have an issue with people who want a better life coming into this country; I really do not. It does not matter what nationality they are. If they are coming in to make a better life for themselves and I know who they are, I do not have an issue. They will be part of our workforce and part of rebuilding Ireland. The problem I have is with the people who come into this country that we know nothing about. We have had a lot of people come into this country that we know nothing about. We have had people who come to this country and look for asylum and there were genuine cases. I do not doubt that, but we had a lot of people who were brought in here and trafficked in here for the wrong reasons. I have an issue with that. We were slow to close the doors to airlines that allowed people from other countries on their aircraft who had paperwork to get on the planes over there but had no paperwork when they landed here. What we should have done at that time was turn them around straight back to the place that sent them here in the first place. People in this country are very welcoming to anyone. They will do whatever they can to make people feel welcome, but because of different things, people are also scared of the unknown. If someone arrived to the Minister's house tonight and knocked on the door, would he open the door and invite them in if he did not know them? Would he open the door and invite him in if they did not have the paperwork needed to enter his house? No, he would not. Why do we use one law for one thing and another law for the other? This Bill is very important and it is very important that we get it right. It is very important that we look after the people who are coming in here who need to be looked after. It is also equally important that we have a way of whittling out the ones we do not want here and who are a danger to our society and everyone else's society around them. This is not just coming from me. It is actually coming from different nationalities who have settled here. These people have integrated and their lives and their children's lives are now here, which I welcome.

On 19 June 2024, I spoke in the House against Ireland opting in to the EU migration and asylum pact. I made it clear then that this pact represented a serious erosion of Ireland's ability to control its own immigration policy and that its implications had not been honestly confronted. Just over a week later on 27 June 2024, I joined my Independent colleagues in voting against the pact. We did so because we believe that decisions of this scale, decisions that affect our sovereignty, our communities and the future direction of our country must not be handed over to Brussels without full accountability. That is why I also call for a national referendum. The Irish people should decide whether this country accepts a pact that will impose new obligations, financial pressures and limits on our ability to manage migration in a fair and responsible way. My stance has not changed. In January 2026, I continue to raise concerns about comments by the EU Commissioner for migration, warning that Ireland risks being held up as an EU example without any regard for the pressures our communities are already feeling. We have a two-tier society. There are genuine, hard-working people in this country for whom we are fighting to get visas. We cannot get them, so the system is broken. The Government has continued to introduce a system that adds pressure. I want to highlight the very genuine, serious problems within our own immigration system. These are affecting individuals, employers and entire communities across the country. I have constituents in west Cork who have been in committed relationships for many years. One person has a fiancée who previously lived here with him, but circumstances required her to return to her home country. She has now re-entered Ireland on a short-term three-month visa, yet we are still waiting for clear information from the Department of justice on whether her de facto visa application will be accepted. This uncertainty is causing enormous stress for a genuine couple simply trying to build a life together. Another case involves an Indian national who has, in fairness to him, been working hard in Ireland for the past 20 years. He has been waiting months for his Garda National Immigration Bureau card to be issued. Since he has not got this card, he cannot travel home to India. He would not be allowed to re-enter Ireland without it. He has missed his brother's funeral. These delays trap people in limbo, despite the fact that they are legally resident here and contributing to essential services.

I thank the Deputy. I call Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice.

Deputy Collins has more time.

He has two minutes and 45 seconds.

That is what I have been told. Will I keep going?

My information states two and a half minutes each, but the Deputy may go ahead.

The man is now stuck outside the country because the document was not processed in time. The relevant company was forced to send another highly skilled employee back to their home country due to red-tape issues that should never have arisen.

The screen states two and a half minutes.

These situations disrupt businesses, damage productivity and place avoidable burdens on employers.

I thank the Deputy. I call Deputy Fitzmaurice. The screen in front of me states two and a half minutes.

It is 20 minutes between six. It should be two minutes and 45 seconds for each of us.

There are six minutes for Deputy Lawless and three for Deputy Gogarty, so the Deputies' co-ordinator needs to keep in contact.

Okay. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. The Minister was not here when a previous Minister signed more of our country's sovereignty away, to put it very simply. We should still be in control of our own affairs. That has gone. It is water under the bridge now. We have two systems in Ireland. We should make it very clear that we value people who have come here through the visa system and who are doing great work throughout the country. They need to be appreciated for everything they are doing. However, the sad reality is that when a renewal is needed, or when an employer wants to bring somebody in through the visa system, it is a nightmare. That is the fact, whether we like it or not. Then there is the other system, whereby someone may come in on a plane without a passport. They could be here five, six or seven years before being dealt with. I understand that the Minister has made improvements. I acknowledge that and I have said it openly, but the reality is that while the Minister says applications will be processed or decided upon in 12 weeks, if the applicants go to the courts they will be here for another two, three, four or five years. That is a major problem. What has happened in this country, not in the Minister's time but before it, is that many decisions made within the Department saw rural communities pitted against each other. Businesspeople have gone around the country like vultures looking for places, including nursing homes that were closed. We lost nursing homes in this country and they became IPAS centres. Maybe it was not the Minister's Department that was involved at the time, but I am referring to the Department that made the decisions. What has happened has caused havoc in rural communities around the country. Those concerned should hang their heads in shame for what they have done. Civil servants in some Department made these decisions without any of us knowing as politicians. We were left looking like fools, not knowing what was going on. Local councillors were left looking like fools because they could not be told what was happening. A liaison person was sent out who would not tell you X, Y or Z, and that was absolutely sickening. I hope the Minister changes this. I realise he is caught now with this European legislation and that if he does not adhere to what we have signed up to, the pact that gives sovereignty away, we can be fined. I welcome what the Minister has done over the past six or seven months, but I will say time and again that there are people who have come here from countries not because they were fleeing war or other such things. They are coming in through the North and by other ways and we have no control over it. We do not know who is coming in. May I be very clear? If people come here through the visa system, they are very welcome to work. Let no one say they are not. Let people not be putting out, especially in the media, that we are against people working. Nobody is against anyone working. Irish people have opened their houses, businesses and properties to people in this regard, but they will not put up with what is going on at the moment.

I welcome some of the Minister's moves in this space over recent months. It must be said, however, that it is deeply regrettable that, as a sovereign nation or state, we tied ourselves to the EU migration pact. We signed up to EU fines, irrespective of the fact that we have a common travel area with Britain, of movements in relation to the BritCard and of the potential change of government in Britain and what that will mean for Ireland. Tying ourselves to the migration pact will result in devastating and potentially significant fines down the line. I welcome the change in rhetoric from the Government. The Minister has been a welcome change from his predecessor, it must be said, but when we drill down into the detail and the cost of the IPAS system, we find it is extraordinary. It is very clear that nothing has changed as of yet. We submitted a parliamentary question and the data in the response are staggering. Up to the end of last October, nearly €1 billion was spent on IPAS. Therefore, last year's budget for IPAS will have exceeded €1 billion. In 2024, it also exceeded €1 billion. An extraordinary amount of money is being spent on the IPAS system. Imagine what we could do with an additional €1 billion every single year. We could build the Galway ring road, for example. People, including taxpayers, are frustrated, for a number of reasons. One is the litany of financial failure by the Minister's Department in relation to contracts and the oversight of spending. These are not my words; it is in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. What the report reveals is extraordinary. One company overcharged VAT by €7.5 million, and only €1.5 million was recovered. The report found serious issues with compliance and the potential for the State to overspend by millions of euro on contracts. What is happening is extraordinary. Another reason for frustration is the abuse of the system itself. The vast majority of applicants ultimately fail. Many remain in the system for excessively long periods, sometimes years, and this ultimately means we are spending a significant proportion of billions of euro unnecessarily. That is the truth of it. Meanwhile, we have so many issues with infrastructure and services for the Irish people. This must be cleaned up. Financial oversight must be cleaned up. We must address this issue. I am still unclear on the processes the Department has put in place since the Comptroller and Auditor General's report was issued. We must address the fact that approximately 90% of applicants come through the North from Britain. That is a major issue. I appreciate that there are complexities and significant challenges but, equally, this is a beast we must tackle. We must get a handle on the issue of thousands of people coming here from Britain via the North. We have to get a handle on it and I think it is crucially important. We should do that ahead of potential changes in Britain. I also want to raise the fact that, as Deputy Fitzmaurice quite rightly said, there are businessmen coming around rural communities and speculating on properties. There are businessmen in County Mayo from the east, the north and all parts of Ireland coming around rural villages in souped-up cars, sports cars and Range Rovers, speculating on warehouses, closed hotels, nursing homes, etc. That is the reality and the Government has facilitated this. I have raised this on many occasions. If the Minister wanted to change this, he would remove the planning circumvention immediately. In Ballina, for example, in the former school site of St. Mary's Secondary School, the people were told it is a nursing home. There was even a sign saying that a nursing home was coming soon. Meanwhile, the planning circumvention for a section 5 was submitted. The Government is treating the people like fools. I have raised this with the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and every time, they and the Government says that they basically agree and will do something on it. Meanwhile, businessmen are driving around rural communities in sports cars, convertibles and Range Rovers speculating and making millions of euro off the back of what is happening. I welcome some of the changes in relation to it but a significant body of work must be done to get a handle on this issue.

Ireland needs a tougher, faster and more enforceable international protection system. Communities are under pressure around the country. Services are stretched and the current system is not working for anyone - not for the State, for genuine refugees or for the public, which expects a fair but firm approach. I have said before that most economic migrants are decent people looking for a better life but these need to be dealt with through a work permit system. Yes, we need quicker decisions and a system where a final refusal actually means a person leaves the State. However, agreeing with these broad aims is not the same as being able to support the Bill in front of us because I am not sure this legislation strikes a balance that a modern, rights-based democracy needs to have. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, the Ombudsman for Children and others have raised serious concerns about how things could operate in a real-life situation. The Bill expands the arrest and detention powers, which I welcome in certain circumstances but it also includes the possibility of detaining unaccompanied children. That is a line we should not cross without absolutely necessary and watertight safeguards. We are not the Trump Administration, and those with a better knowledge than me are arguing that provisions on legal counselling are too vague, leaving applicants, including vulnerable people, without clear access to independent advice at key stages. Vulnerability assessments are preliminary only and are not ongoing either, meaning victims of trafficking, people who have been tortured or people with disabilities, including mental disabilities, may fall through the cracks. The age assessment procedures are also unclear and oral appeals are restrictive. Surely best practice is to always allow people to be heard in person whenever they want. It is not wrong for the people of Ireland to want a tougher system but as a democracy, they also want a system that can withstand legal challenge; protect the vulnerable, especially children; and ensure faith in the process, which I am not sure the Bill, as it is currently proposed, will do. Maybe we need to explicitly prohibit the detention of unaccompanied children, except in very exceptional circumstances with automatic judicial oversight. Maybe we need to guarantee access to free, independent legal counselling at all stages, including detention decisions and age assessments and strengthen age and vulnerability assessment procedures. We should maybe restore oral appeals as the default and not the exception to make sure there is fairness in the system, and finally, guarantee the full independence and adequate funding of the appeals bodies and the chief inspectorate. If these changes were made, we could have a Bill that is firm, fair and, crucially still, fast, if the proper resourcing is put in. In many circumstances, the reason it took so long before was down to processing and staffing issues. We could have a Bill that protects our borders and respects basic human rights. It is not a case of either-or.

I would welcome any Government Bill if it will deal with the present chaotic system of IPAS processing enforcement, as well as the speculation that is going on in villages all across this island. We definitely need to see faster processing of asylum claims, a more efficient decision-making process and less time spent by applicants in State accommodation, which is enriching cowboy developers and speculators all over this country, with systems being imposed on local communities. I would welcome it if it sees quicker processing for successful applicants, and if it stops the trafficking of many unaccompanied minors. This is something I raised with Tusla in the committee. Many of them end up in Tusla or many go missing. Over 30 of them went missing last year. I would also welcome it if it deals with a faster return of those who have been refused to their country of origin or a previous EU country. I would welcome the Bill if it was to deal with these because, to date, the system has been quite farcical and reckless. The State simply has not been bothered to apply its own rules. We had the farcical situation of knowing about people arriving and flushing or shredding passports down the toilets in the aeroplane and going into airport bins, which was widespread. The State was ignoring its own rules. If the Government started to deal with the application of the rules, it would be welcome. That said, I do not think it should be something that is imposed on us by faceless EU bureaucrats. The people of Ireland should be making these decisions. I look up at the statues of all the patriots around this building. To be giving our sovereignty away to the EU is a betrayal of these people, who we are supposed to be honouring in here. I had previously written to the Minister's office and the Department of justice separately in relation to deportation orders. I was told the following: As there are no routine exit checks at Irish borders, it is not possible to accurately provide the number of people who are currently in Ireland subject to deportation orders. There you have it. On the cost, the State has spent an estimated €1.2 billion on IPAS for the past year. That is an estimation for 2025. It means a large portion of that money - that €1.2 billion of the public's hard-earned money - is going to speculator cowboys throughout this country. If it puts an end to that, it would be welcome. It should also put an end to the process by which the State has been taking local community facilities and buildings, imposing systems on local communities without consultation and dividing communities. This is something that definitely has to end. We have been clear from the beginning that if a person is not entitled to be in Ireland, they should be returned safely to their country of origin and the deportation order should be both enforced and tracked. We also need to have the powers to immediately return those who are not entitled to be here. I believe an Irish Government is best placed to make these decisions in the interests of the Irish people, not these unelected bureaucrats in Brussels or faceless EU institutions that make the decisions for us, which undermine our democracy and sovereignty. If the Bill could tackle these issues, it is something I would very much welcome.

I want to start by clearly saying what I was elected on in the election a year ago. I was one of the only TDs to have immigration on my leaflet, which the people of north Dublin elected me on. I was elected on a belief that immigration must be handled in a dignified and proactive way based on dialogue between communities and Government. Since sitting in the Chamber and in my office, I have heard many Deputies speak about the previous Government and how the Department was not engaging with local representatives, TDs and councillors. No constituency can see that better than Dublin Bay North, with the former Crown Paints site and the way it was dealt with. I have spoken in this House multiple times about how an inquiry needs to be done on how it was dealt with, how people were put in danger as a result of how it was dealt with, and how it can never happen again. I knocked on nearly every door in the area. There were people from all around Ireland who came there to aggravate the current status but the people are the most welcoming, hard-working people. People in north Dublin are the most welcoming people and this was treated completely wrongly. I know this was not the Minister, it was a previous Minister, but I welcome how swiftly his Department dealt with the Crown Paints site. The mandate I was given is the standard to which I will always hold myself in this House. I welcome some of the changes in the asylum system that this Bill brings in. What is proposed is sensible and faster decisions are better for everyone. Clear procedures are better for applicants, communities and the State. Three weeks ago I met a refugee. We had a lovely meeting. He said he really wants an easier system so he can get to work. The Department has already brought out statements on that and I would welcome more being brought in. They are coming here for a better life. They want to work. If they cannot work easily, that sets them out as a target. He was begging me. He asked was there anything he could do to be in the system. Leaving people in limbo is something we cannot support. The fact the Minister is speeding it through is much better. To create trust, we need to communicate with communities. I have already said that. Deputy Fitzmaurice said that. Where communities are feeling ignored and you do not communicate with those communities, it creates a vacuum for misinformation and hatred to spread. The Minister is aware of this and I welcome the work he has done on this. I call again for an inquiry into how the Crown Paints site in Coolock was dealt with. The fear, anger and division was completely avoidable. We need to learn from it and not repeat it. Some parts of the Bill will help with that. Previous speakers spoke about solidarity. I think it is very true. Recently I was at a launch in Beaumont Hospital and heard directly about nurses and doctors being attacked when leaving work. I welcome the statements from the Minister’s office recently. It is important that we stand united with the Indian community. They are part of our community. They look after us when we are sick. They looked after my granny when she was in hospital. For anyone to say these hard-working men and women are not contributing to society need to go and see. I know it is not just that community but the entire migrant community in our health system. I stand with them and everyone who comes to this country to make this country a better place. I believe in a country where immigration is managed with respect and where people are safe in their workplaces and on the streets, and where communities are included and not ignored in any communication. That is why legislation like this must be discussed. Some people in this House do not want to discuss this legislation, but when you do not discuss this in the Parliament of our country, in Dáil Éireann, cén áit gur féidir leat labhairt faoi na rudaí seo? Toghtar daoine ón phobail le teacht chuig an áit seo chun caint faoi na rudaí seo. Tá sé an-tábhachtach go mbeimid inár adults to be able to talk about these situations. This sits on top of the housing shortage and the blame for this along with the overcrowded schools. I have been speaking about this. If we ignore the reality, we gift it to those who wish to exploit fear and create vacuums. Again, I commend the Minister for how quickly he dealt with north Dublin. I want to bring this back to the Bill. The accelerated procedures in the new tribunal for asylum and returns appeal and the new biometric screening and return mechanisms may improve efficiency, but efficiency without fairness will fail. I spoke to people in sector. I know this is only Second Stage but they are worried enforcement will fail without it being properly discussed. We cannot process people quickly enough. I heard other Deputies talk about the €1.2 billion spent in 2025. People are angry. There is a range of issues but they are also angry at people becoming millionaires off a system that is broken. It is very important this gets brought through and implemented as soon as possible. Coming back to the Bill, I support the aims of creating a system that is fair, consistent, lawful and workable. I welcome that part but I will judge it by does it respect human dignity and what this country has always stood for. From speaking to constituents, there is public confidence as a result of the announcements by the Government at the moment. It is important to recognise that migration policy must go hand in hand with public engagement and with housing, infrastructure investment and everything. Ireland has a strong history of emigration. I have spoken about this in the House multiple times. We understand what it is like to leave home. We understand what it is like to seek safety and opportunity in places where we are trying to make better lives for ourselves, but we can be firm and organised in how we manage migration and immigration. If you look at statistics, it is very difficult, and I have heard other Deputies mention this, that we do have an open border. Looking at any of the parliamentary questions which have been submitted by Deputies, including by my own office, on this, it is very difficult in the sense that I do not think we will have completely secure borders until we have a united Ireland. That is another point I would push for. I support measures that speed up decisions to protect the vulnerable and I will continue to argue for proper community consultation for north Dublin. What happened there can never happen again. It put people and refugees in danger. What I have said I will do is what people elected me to do and I intend to keep doing it.

The way immigration and bogus asylum seekers have been manged to date is nothing short of a social and economic catastrophe. I am utterly convinced this issue will come to define previous governments. Warning after warning was dismissed and was reframed. Warning after warning that the State was effectively being ripped off were ignored with the excuse that we were in an emergency and therefore proper controls did not apply. Billions have been spent and very likely billions more will be spent because this State has adopted the slowest possible approach to managing a crisis that has been plain for all to see except for those who wanted to push the de facto open border policies. If the Minister wants to see what talking tough and taking no meaningful action on the asylum chaos looks like and where it will lead to, then he may look no further than the UK. There the entire political establishment is being convulsed by defections from the establishment parties. The people are fed up of governments which promise much but do little but deliver tough-sounding rhetoric with no actions. The same is true here. Our people here are angry at how unwilling or how powerless governments have been in dealing with this generational crisis. This Bill promises much, but my fear is that it will be bogged down in bureaucratic nonsense and loopholes sought and found by the overpaid NGOs which are determined to oppose all necessary reform. I have very serious concerns which I have raised many times in this House about the vetting, or lack of vetting, of bogus asylum seekers, the delays deporting asylum seekers with criminal pasts, many of whom come from safe countries, and no vetting of the providers of IPAS accommodation. They have been described here as businesspeople but they are not all businesspeople. Some of these providers could be better described as gangsters and they have question marks over their suitability or the appropriateness of having those people involved in the provision of any type of accommodation. What vetting is being done there? I do not believe there is any vetting there either of the providers and who is involved. We need an urgent overhaul of both our dysfunctional immigration system and the IPAS system in terms of who is providing the accommodation. Are those people checked? My sense is that none of them were checked at any stage. Some, as I say, are totally unsuitable. The people involved in the provision of IPAS accommodation, some of them gangsters and chancers, continue to profiteer from an unchecked, unregulated and broken system. This is extremely alarming. We need urgent action on this before it is too late. I, as a represenative here, want action. I want a dramatic reduction in the numbers of economic migrants and in the numbers of bogus asylum seekers entering our country. I want no more excuses and deflection. We need reform urgently in terms of the people coming in, the vetting system and lack of vetting, and the lack of urgent deportations and timely deportations, but also there needs to be a vetting process of the suitability of some of these providers because there are serious question marks there.

I am glad to talk on this very important Bill this evening. I thank the Minister, Deputy Jim O’Callaghan, for taking this issue by the scruff of the neck because, since he came into office and took over this role, he has already put people on the plane back to the countries that they came from if they were not entitled to be here. That has not been done in the last number of years with previous Ministers, and I am grateful to him for doing that. We have to differentiate between the people who are coming here. There are people who are coming here with work visas and they are very welcome to work here. Many of them are badly needed and they have trouble in getting permanent visas or getting their family, wives and children brought over here. Reputable employers are raising concerns about that. They may have men they have trained in and people who have very skills in the areas where they are working. We appreciate those people and we need them. We need the system to help them to progress and to stay here when they are working like this and they are needed. The other ones we can do without are the people who come here with no passport, and seem to arrive here and demand everything. We know what it was like for the people on the Muckross Road in Killarney when 70 or 80 asylum seekers were put into a house alongside elderly women on that road. They were not vetted and nobody knew where they were from or why they were there. That is very wrong because vetting is seriously important and if they have no passports or identification, they cannot be vetted and they should be sent back exactly to where they came from in the first place. The changes to the international protection system will ensure that anyone who has been granted asylum in Ireland is only permitted to avail of family reunification when they are financially self-sufficient and can provide for those they wish to bring here. The Minister is also proposing to introduce power to revoke or refuse a residence permit for refugee in circumstances where they are found to be a danger to the security of the State or have been convicted of involvement in serious crime. While these situations may be rate, there are a lot of them at times. It is important that these powers are provided for in law and that these people are sent back to their country of origin. The scheme will be implemented over a planned 12-month period, allowing for the development of systems and resources to assess eligibility, share data securely, and collect and process payments. While not all international protection applicants are working, many are. It makes sense and it is only right for these people who are earning an income and paying tax to also make a contribution to the State for their accommodation costs. Other member states operate those systems already. There are two rules for applying for citizenship. The Minister is proposing to update the rules around how people qualify for citizenship. At present someone wanting to apply for citizenship by naturalisation must have been resident here for five years. The rule for people granted international protection is different in that they only need to be here for three years. The Minister is proposing to update that so that they will have to be resident here for five years before they can apply to be citizens here. It would be very important to see if there is any way that we can fast-track the pathway for people who are working to stay here. As I said, many employers and having difficulty in sourcing staff. They may have them on a time limit or whatever it is and when that time is up, they are ordered to go back and they are not able to get an extension. I ask the Minister to review that and ensure that people who want to work and are working here are facilitated in their quest to remain here. At the same time, those people who come here without any identification, have no vetting and are not prepared to say where they came from or how they came to be here, must be sent back by return plane to wherever they came from last - whatever airport they got on. I will be supporting this. It looks like we will have some plan or some form of order to follow now because we did not over the past number of years. Many people were hurt in rural communities when they saw people landing there and they were not sure where they were from. They did not have any vetting and they were worried about them, especially women who were walking the walks they used always walk in the evenings but had to stop. That is not right. This is our country and our women, men and children must be protected from whoever new is coming in. If the Minister, I or anyone else inside in this Chamber is going for the job, we have to be vetted and vetted several times. The same thing has to apply to people coming in here. They have to be vetted. It is the most important thing. We have to understand and be sure where they come from. I urge the Minister to continue in his work because he is a massive improvement on what we had under the previous Government. We look forward to supporting him.