Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can assure the Deputy that I am fully committed to ensuring that our international protection system is robust and rules-based and that our borders are protected. A core part of my role as Minister for Justice is, of course, to uphold the Constitution at all times and I will always do so.

I believe the new EU asylum and migration pact is a game changer for Ireland. It was agreed in December last and approved by the European Parliament last month. The pact was carefully negotiated over several years to significantly reform the current approach to migration and asylum both in Ireland and across the entire EU. It will do so by providing a strong cohesive legislative framework to address the challenges we are facing in this area. It will speed up the processing of international protection applicants so we have a firm and fair system. It will make it easier to return those who are found not to be entitled to protection. It will introduce greater security checking of applicants. It will reduce the volume of secondary movement and make it easier to transfer applicants to the member states responsible. It will reduce the time people spend in State-provided accommodation and support the return of people found not to be entitled to protection.

All of that requires systemic co-operation and we cannot manage it on our own. We need co-operation and we need other countries to be willing to accept people who should not be processed here. The pact offers us all in Europe a real opportunity to work together to design a system that is fair but firm, that is based on a fair sharing of responsibility and that works for everyone.

Opting into the pact is a very positive opportunity for Ireland to achieve co-ordinated and wide-reaching reform in a key area of public interest. I can assure the Deputy that the pact does not contain any provisions that require a constitutional referendum. As measures governed by Protocol 21 of the EU treaty, the request by Ireland to opt in requires the prior approval of both Houses under Article 29.4.7° of the Constitution. The Government recently approved my proposal to seek that approval and I intend to do so next week, when we will have debates in both this House and the Seanad.

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