Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 7:

In page 10, between lines 30 and 31, to insert the following: “ “stateless person” means a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law;”.

This amendment is linked to the previous one and adds a definition that a "stateless person" means a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law. This is proposed to try to strengthen the Bill in terms of its definitions and also aims to assist in meeting our international obligation in terms of asylum seekers.

Those of us on the Opposition side who have submitted amendments have engaged with the range of NGOs which work with asylum seekers. I do not question the Minister of State's integrity in this regard and I appreciate he must take legal advice and guidance from his officials on these matters. However, a range of NGOs that both he and I respect are experts on these areas and they have profound concerns. I did not call a vote on the previous amendment because I would like to have more debate on the issues raised in the different amendments and every vote stalls us for 15 or 20 minutes. Today we are going to see example after example of areas where this Bill is deficient. I believe that even at this late stage, the Minister of State should consider deferring it until the new year and should take the intervening period to engage with the NGOs in order to strengthen the Bill and address their concerns. Otherwise, we will end up with a Bill that the Opposition cannot support. That would be disappointing because we support the single application procedure. However, the problem is that this procedure dealt with in isolation from other matters that need to be dealt with and without providing the necessary protections means this Bill is not the one it needs to be.

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