Michael McDowell
National University of Ireland · Independent · Ireland
“Then I think of this particular Chamber where people are polite and kind to each other and listen to each other respectfully. There is no baying or shouting down or whatever. It is a great tribute to the Seanad staff that that spirit continues to exist in this House.”
“I note that the whole scheme of the planning Act is that exempt development proposals are considered by the Houses. It is questionable whether this House has really considered the exempt development regulations. Without debate, we sent them off to a committee.”
“I am one of the people who disagrees with the substance of that report. We have to have a real solid debate on it here in this House, not merely a cursory one. It is an issue of fundamental importance. It cannot be avoided, one way or the other. Whatever your views are on it, it needs to be thrashed out.”
“Although coming up to the end of this term we are rushing things through, and the guillotine is well-oiled and slicing this way and that, we have a lot of work to do in the autumn.”
“The people who did that were brought before the International Court of Justice and condemned and imprisoned. If Ireland does not clearly state that there are to be consequences for people who do things like what Mladić, Milošević and Karadžić were brought to account for, if we are incapable as a State of publicly saying that what Secretar…”
“If we cannot, as a State, say publicly to Rubio, "Hands off the International Criminal Court", when they were quite happy when the people who did the 7,000 murders in Srebrenica got their just desserts, but when there is any suggestion that what has happened in Gaza, with 70,000 innocent people killed by aerial bombardment and land bombar…”
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“With the best will in the world, I have been where he is and I know what you can do and what you cannot do. That will not be fully operational. All of the provisions that would be necessary to operate such a centre just cannot be done or put in place. The centre cannot be chosen before 12 June. We know it will be introduced gradually and in stages. I would wager a fair sum of money that the asylum border procedure centres, which are places where people who are subject to the asylum border procedure are required to remain, will not be there within the next three to five years. This is because of the difficulties involved, such as who will operate them, who will ensure they operate in an orderly fashion and who will maintain order in them?”
“He has not done what some of his colleagues might have been tempted to do in years gone by, which was to ask a Minister of State to take this or that Stage when it was apparent to everybody in the House that a Minister of State did not have the authority to accept even the principle of an amendment, let alone accept an Opposition amendment. The Minister has been very generous with his time by being present for debates. The Minister stated that this has to be up and running by 12 June. I do not accept that it has to be up and running by then. To examine one aspect of this - Chapter 6 dealing with asylum border procedures - the Minister has spoken about this. He will not, by 12 June, have an asylum border procedure centre established. The Minister will not do it.”
“I agree completely with the Cathaoirleach's remarks about the Bills Office. The fact that this document was produced effectively within 24 hours of the conclusion of Committee Stage is a tribute to the hard work, dedication and patriotism of the staff of these Houses. When we in this House complain about the absence of notice on anything, it is always at the back of my mind that there are literally people working until the early hours of the morning to provide us with whatever notice circumstances afford. I fully accept what the Chair saying in relation to that. The second thing I want to say is that the Minister has rightly said – I want to acknowledge this – that he has devoted his personal time to the debating of this and other legislation of his to a remarkable extent.”
“We, as Members of the Oireachtas, must insist on compliance with our own rules, especially when we are confronted with a multiple guillotining in both Houses that is giving rise to the vast majority of 300 amendments never being considered by either House.”
“How can the Oireachtas will things to be the law if they are rushed through in the manner I have described and the great majority of Members of both Houses of the Oireachtas have never had the opportunity to even ask a question about any of the amendments that the Government proposes to make to its own Bill? I am only allowed to speak once on the amendment, but I can reply at the end of the debate. I am serious about this. There has to be a new approach to accountability to the Houses. It is in the Standing Orders of both Houses. This is not the Seanad becoming uppity; it is part of the legislative process.”
“This and the other amendment in the group have that effect. The amendment in my name, seconded by Senator Craughwell, is there to insist on our entitlements, namely, that there will be a report one year after the Bill becomes law, if it does, and that the House will be aware of all of the relevant aspects of its operation and will be informed as to the result of its enactment, even if subject to the guillotine. Last week, 188 amendments were carried, mainly by guillotine. Some 122 Government amendments will be carried this afternoon by the guillotine process. The vast majority of amendments will never have been considered by the House. If a guillotine is imposed in Dáil Éireann, they will never be considered there at all. The courts and President, in considering an Article 26 reference, will assume that this is the will of the Oireachtas.”
“I will give the Minister an example. We in this House legislated to make it a criminal offence to pay for sex. We changed the law in order to do that. Whether that was wise, I do not know, but it was done. There was a review process in the legislation, but everyone seems to have ignored the fact that, under that legislation, we were entitled to a report under our own rules of procedure. It is in that spirit that I am tendering this amendment. Does the Government accept it is bound by those Standing Orders or does it not? It is habitually not complying with them. In fact, it is ignoring the obligations under those Standing Orders to either House habitually. Other Members of the House have put down amendments seeking particular reports on the operation of the Bill in particular regards.”
“Some people may say that is not in statute form but is only in the Standing Orders of the Houses. To that I say that if one tenders a Bill as a member of Government to either House and gets it passed by both Houses, one is doing so on the solemn undertaking and understanding that, one year after its exactment, one will present a report to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas in the parliamentary library, as per Standing Orders, stating precisely how the legislation in question has been implemented. It is not a little frill on top of legislation or an obligation that can be dismissed or ignored, as it has been routinely in the past. Rather, it is an obligation that is a solemn duty on the part of the Minister. It does not apply solely to this Bill because it has controversial provisions. It applies to everything.”
“We in this House are not entitled to put down parliamentary questions like Members of Dáil Éireann are, requiring that kind of information as of right, but we are entitled, by the rules of both Houses, to that information to see precisely what effect the measures that have been enacted have had in the year following their enactment. I will say something. This is not just for the Department of justice today. It is for every Department, member of the Government and Minister of State who has functions under legislation. They must account to the Houses one year after they get the law changed for how it is operating as a matter of obligation to the Houses. That is the law of our land and those are the procedures laid down in the Standing Orders of both Houses.”
“If it is unknown in this House that that provision exists - when I discovered it, I was a little bit surprised, I have to say – it is no surprise at all that it is ignored all the time by Government. We frequently see amendments being put down asking for such reports on implementation to be tabled and the Government, in each case, defeating such amendments when in fact it is a basic rule and a basic part of the discipline of our Parliament that that reporting process is complied with. What I want to see is that if this Bill becomes law in the next few weeks, one way or another, we will be told in a year's time exactly how it has worked. Was there a detention centre established? How many unaccompanied minors had been affected by it? How many people had been subject to the border procedure during that year and the like?”
“Once this Bill goes through the second guillotine - it must be the most beheaded Bill of all time - gets to the Áras an Uachtarán and is signed into law, which I presume it will be, unless it goes to the Supreme Court in the next number of weeks, the clock will ticking on the Department of justice and every Department to get ready and diary in that in one year's time it will report to both Seanad Éireann and Dáil Éireann as to how the Bill has been implemented. That is the law of the land that is laid down in the procedures of the Oireachtas. It is as binding on a Minister or Department as any other procedure in this House. It is strange that that is practically unknown as a provision.”
“We have, on occasion, included provisions in an Act that it should be reviewed after three years or whatever, but we have never insisted as a matter of basic discipline laid down by the two Houses of the Oireachtas that we get a report in respect of every Bill, except either of those two finance measures, saying how it was implemented and that it has to be done within 12 months of the date of its enactment.”
“204 of the Dáil, which provides: Twelve months following the enactment of a Bill, save in the case of the Finance Bill and the Appropriation Bill, the member of the Government or Minister of State who is officially responsible for implementation of the Act shall provide a report which shall review the functioning of the Act and which shall be laid in the Parliamentary Library. If a Minister of the Government tenders any Bill to the Houses of the Oireachtas, unless it is the Finance Bill or the Appropriation Bill, he or she is obliged by the rules of the Oireachtas, adopted separately by each House, to report in one year on the implementation of the Act. In my experience, this is never done.”
“On a matter of the importance of this Bill, which is incorporating into Irish law the ill-named migration pact of the European Union, it is a sad reflection that that is where we are. As to the exact wording of the Report Stage amendment I have moved, I bring to the House's attention that Standing Order No. 179 provides as follows: Twelve months following the enactment of a Bill, save in the case of the Finance Bill and the Appropriation Bill, the member of the Government or Minister of State who is officially responsible for implementation of the Act shall provide a report which shall review the functioning of the Act and which shall be laid in the Parliamentary Library. That is not just this Chamber; that provision is mirrored in the Standing Orders of Dáil Éireann. Seanad Standing Order No. 179 mirrors exactly Standing Order No.”
“None of our amendments to a Bill from the Dáil take effect, as the Bills Office reminds us, unless they are accepted by Dáil Éireann. When it comes back to Dáil Éireann, and with no disrespect to the Members of that Chamber, it will look as if these 300 amendments received some consideration in this House. They will not have received it. I remember so many times when Ministers said the guillotine was not going to be used, or used only sparingly and in circumstances of emergency. We now find ourselves in a grotesque situation where 300 Government amendments, the vast majority of which will not have been considered by this House, will have been passed and will arrive back in Dáil Éireann and the Bill will probably be guillotined there as well, without proper consideration. That is a contemptuous way to deal with any Legislature.”
“It transpires that the Government, not satisfied with the 188 amendments it made last week, is tendering a further 123 amendments, by my count, today. That is extraordinary. It claims this is needed to meet a deadline. It is not, by the way; there would be no effect if this was only enacted in July. Nobody in Europe would even blink if that happened. We are supposed to do it by a date in June. In any event, what has happened is that the Government has fixed the Order of Business of this House today, again with the guillotine, which says that if its 123 amendments are not reached, they are deemed to have been considered and passed by this House. Let us remember that this is a Bill that was guillotined through Dáil Éireann and will have 300 amendments made in the passage of one week through this House.”
“That became available later on Friday, which meant that Members of this House were in a position to table Report Stage amendments in an orderly fashion. We would not have been able to do so at all if we did not know the layout of the Bill as amended by the Government guillotine. The next thing that happened is that the Government fixed today for Report Stage, and the consequence of that was that any amendments Members wanted to table on Report Stage had to be before the Bills Office by 11 a.m. on Monday morning. We had from Friday at lunchtime, when we received this administrative reprint, to Monday at 11 a.m. to table amendments for Report Stage. When all the amendments were put out, the Bills Office then had to make head or tail of who was seeking to further amend this Bill on Report Stage.”
“I want to say two things by way of preliminary observation. We are on Report Stage of a Bill which runs to 299 sections at present. The debate on the Bill in Dáil Éireann was guillotined. It was then brought to this House by the Government in circumstances where it requires further extensive amendment. Members of this House might be interested to know that the guillotine that was used on Committee Stage in this House had the effect of making a further 188 amendments to the Bill, some of them involving new sections and some involving small changes. On Thursday last, the Committee Stage debate on the Bill was guillotined. On Friday, the Bills Office commenced the noble task of putting together an administrative reprint of this lengthy Bill.”
“I move amendment No. 4: In page 19, between lines 2 and 3, to insert the following: “(4) The Minister shall not later than 12 months following the enactment of this Act provide a report which shall review the functioning of this Act and which shall be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas in accordance with standing orders of the Dáil and Seanad.”. This amendment is in my name and the names of Senators Boyhan and Craughwell.”
“Senator Mullen has been waiting patiently to acquaint the House with the factual background to the award of compensation so that we can see that there is a strong case for allowing the State in certain circumstances to say we cannot afford to compensate everybody whose accommodation, for instance, has fallen below the standards required by the Court of Justice of the European Union. I will give way to Senator Mullen, if I can.”
“Essentially, what it says is that where an emergency arises, the Government is entitled to make an order limiting the number of persons entitled to apply for international protection if we are being overwhelmed by numbers, and including the power to limit or suspend any obligations of the State to provide accommodation if we do not have it, the power to limit or suspend any obligations to provide payments or material assistance in certain circumstances and the power to limit or suspend any liability on the part of the State or statutory bodies to compensate any persons applying for international protection or their dependants. I have in mind the judgment the High Court made awarding compensation.”
“(3) In the exercise of its powers under this Chapter, the Government may have regard to any relevant consideration including the following considerations: (a) the budgetary situation and financial capacity of the Exchequer; (b) the capacity of the State and of national economic resources and enterprises to provide accommodation for persons seeking international protection and for other persons needing accommodation in the State; (c) the capacity of the State and statutory and other bodies to provide temporary or emergency accommodation for persons who could be otherwise homeless or obliged to live in overcrowded and/or unsafe or unsanitary circumstances; (d) the exigencies of the common good.". This proposal is to amend the Act to allow the Government to have an emergency break.”
“(2) Without prejudice to the provisions of subsection (1) , the power of the Government to make an order thereunder shall include the following powers: (a) the power to limit the number of persons entitled to apply for international protection in any given year or other period; (b) the power to limit or suspend any obligations on the State to provide accommodation for any persons applying for international protection; (c) the power to limit or suspend any obligations on the State to provide payments or material assistance in kind to any applicants for international protection; (d) the power to limit or suspend any liability on the part of the State or other statutory bodies or authorities or agencies to compensate any persons applying for international protection or their dependents for any failure to afford such persons accommodation or other welfare assistance.”
“(1) Nothwithstanding any provision of this Act or of any other enactment relating to the provision by the State of international protection or reception of persons by the State as refugees or for subsidiary protection or for application for either such status, the Government by order may adapt, suspend or modify the application of any provision of any such enactment whereby the said order of the Government declares that such measures are urgently required in the public interest or to protect the security of the State or to conserve the resources of the State in the national interest.”
“I move amendment No. 25: In page 25, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following: "CHAPTER 2 Powers of the Government to adapt, suspend and modify application of international protection provisions in the case of exceptional difficulties or emergencies Orders made by the Government 7.”
“That provision in these rules seems to be ignored an awful lot, but it would save a lot of amendments and waste of time in debates if Ministers actually did comply with their obligations to make a report to each House and for the report to be laid before each House.”
“I want to bring to the attention of Members Standing Order 179, which states: Twelve months following the enactment of a Bill, save in the case of the Finance Bill and the Appropriation Bill, the member of the Government or Minister of State who is officially responsible for implementation of the Act shall provide a report which shall review the functioning of the Act and which shall be laid in the Parliamentary Library. It is part of the rules of the Oireachtas that these reports have to be made. I am just signalling to the Minister for justice that he is under an obligation under the rules of the House to make a report 12 months after the passing of the Bill as to what progress has been made with it.”
“The Minister, Deputy O’Callaghan, unfortunately, is fronting up for them. I am not going to allow my personal regard for him to stand in the way of calling out what he is doing, which is trampling on democracy.”
“It is going to table 150 amendments to its own legislation, which went through the Dáil on a guillotine. It is going to railroad those amendments through without debate. It is going to prevent anybody who does not have the same perspective as the Department of justice and the Minister, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, from having their views even put on the record. It is a disgrace. It is a serious disgrace. All I can say is that the Minister, Deputy O’Callaghan, is a good friend of mine. He has come into this House and he has appeared to be decent and open to ideas and constructive debate very frequently. Whoever decided, however, and it must have been a Cabinet or Chief Whip’s decision, to guillotine this legislation on Committee Stage in the way it is being done is a disgrace to Irish democracy.”
“The shameful decision on the part of the Government to try to railroad this measure through this House at this stage will prevent it from being properly discussed and prevent different voices with different perspectives on some of the issues raised, including detention of people, being heard. All of this is being rushed through. There is no excuse for it; none whatsoever. There is no urgency. We have had a lengthy St. Patrick's Day break. We are coming up to a lengthy Easter break. This measure, which has huge social consequences for this State, is being rushed through without debate. Fianna Fáil stood for the retention of Seanad Éireann. Do we remember that? If the Government behaves like this, it effectively says that it does not matter what the people in the Seanad think. It is going to do what it wants.”
“I always dislike using exaggerated language, but I find myself disgusted, disappointed and shocked by the Government attempting to guillotine the debate on the International Protection Bill in this House. On Committee Stage, there are over 400 amendments. Based on a rough view of the amendments paper, approximately half of them are Government amendments. It will be proposed, in all probability, that all of those amendments will be adopted by this House without any discussion whatsoever. That will be the consequence of what is happening. In the wider world, people on the hard right are exploiting the migration and asylum-seeking issue.”
“I move amendment No. 8: In page 18, between lines 12 and 13, to insert the following: “ “Common Travel Area” means the area consisting of the State and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in respect of which the nationals of either jurisdiction generally have freedom to travel from one jurisdiction to the other and to reside there without any visa or residence permit;”.”
“The answer to that is that if member states have the right to determine their own laws, regardless of Luxembourg decisions, no compensation would be paid because the Irish people would say that is nonsense and they are not paying people who come here and find they have to stay in a tent because there is no place for them. We are not going to do that in the future.”
“This judgment whereby compensation is paid to people who we did not have accommodation for is forced on us by the European Union. The judgment is clear. It goes through case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It should be an Irish decision whether to compensate people. It should not be forced on us by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Irish High Court judges should not be obliged by European case law to hand out money to people who came to Ireland when there was no accommodation for them and when Irish people, as well as asylum seekers, were in emergency accommodation, including families sharing one hotel room and the like. Regarding people who came here when there was no capacity to house them, we should not be in a position whereby we end up compensating those people and everybody who will follow.”
“Hungary, France and everybody in the European Union is entitled to say they need, because of demographics, X thousand people to come and work in their country. The German Chancellor once welcomed a million Syrians because she said they needed them. Whether she was right or wrong about that, she did it. We say this is a migration pact and a migration issue but it really is not a migration issue. It is about whether Ireland has control over the one area this all applies to, which is international protection - not economic migration.”
“Nobody in the EU institutions or the European Court of Justice has the right to tell us what to do in relation to that. The Government decides that through departmental decisions. We are sovereign in that area. The place where we are not sovereign is with regard to asylum seeking. We talk about the very carefully described migration pact. In relation to economic migration we are sovereign; we decide who gets into Ireland, how many people we need and how many people are welcome here. It has nothing to do with migration; this pact has everything to do with asylum seeking and international protection. That is what it is about. It has been described as a migration pact when, in fact, it is an asylum and international protection pact.”
“A point that has to be made for honesty's sake in this debate is that we are sovereign in relation to economic migration, with the sole exception of the right of EU nationals to locate here under EU law, which none of us is challenging or saying is wrong. The Minister and his colleagues determine whether we need more Third World people to come to Ireland to do the valuable work many of them do in our social services and the like. We will probably have to make decisions about construction workers in the fullness of time. We are entirely sovereign in that area. The point that has to be rammed home is that the EU has no capacity to say to us, "You must allow people in to be electricians, this, that or the other", or, "You must increase your workforce", or whatever.”
“What else can this country do when it is pumping resources into the hands of persons who are exploiting the shortage of housing by offering the State emergency housing at unconscionable rents?”
“It is about time that we honestly said that migration is good, bogus asylum seeking is bad and we will not allow the abuse of asylum seeking to put member states in the position that we in this country have been put in. If we put it over ten years, how much have we spent on asylum accommodation? Is it €1.3 billion or €1.2 billion per year? That is €12 billion. We could build a lot of things with €12 billion and do a lot of things with that money, but we have put it into the hands of landlords, hoteliers and others around the country to no avail and to achieve practically nothing. Finally, there is no justice in putting people into substandard accommodation. There is no justice in that, especially when there are children involved.”
“I am just saying that it is about time that the governments of the European Union got together and said to the institutions of the European Union, particularly to the Parliament, for which nothing is good enough but to get more power, that the member states would make a better fist of asylum seeking, in particular, if their sovereignty was, as suggested in the Sinn Féin motion, restored substantially and if the European Union admitted that it cannot maintain the cohesion of the Union and, at the same time, make such a bags of controlling the abuse of asylum seeking, which is an economic and criminal racket operated at great cost to the people who are stripped of their money by traffickers.”
“It is about time that the governments of the European Union said that the so-called competence, which has been conferred on the Union, is not working out and that they want a radical rethink on this issue. I am not parroting Trump-like views on immigration. I am quite happy with immigration providing it is lawful. I am very happy with it. I believe there is a danger that hard-right racist thinkers equally like to conflate migration. There are two groups of people who like to conflate migration with asylum seeking - the hard right and the hard left. Truthfully, down the middle, we have to draw that distinction.”
“No matter what view you take of asylum seeking, nobody is forced to come to Ireland because it is difficult to get here except through the United Kingdom, and it is difficult to get there except through France and the rest of it. It is about time the Government looked at Article 18 of this charter of fundamental rights and freedoms and spoke to the governments in Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania - I am not talking about Hungary but I will include it - and Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Finland, by the way, has 2,000 people seeking asylum and it has the same population we have. There is a lesson there.”
“The time has come for the European Union to reconsider whether member states' sovereign rights should be restored to them so the Danes can do what they want and the Poles can do what they want. The figures mentioned by Senator Keogan were interesting. Looking at the figures for applicants per head of population, we are not doing all that well. We are a destination of choice. It should go back to the individual member states to determine how they strike the balance. When a State like ours is in the middle of a housing crisis, to say an applicant for asylum is entitled to be compensated because he has voluntarily come to this country and found no accommodation available to him offends common sense. He did not have to come to Ireland.”
“When I was Minister for Justice, I was president for six months of the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the European Union. I found our diplomats kept on saying to me, "If you take that stance, Minister, you'll be isolated." When I went to the meetings, I then found that the other Ministers for justice and home affairs were with me 100% and there was no question of me being isolated. I believe it is time the Ministers for justice and home affairs across the European Union got together and said to the rest of the European Council and its President that this system of asylum-seeking is not working out well and is not going to work out well. The migration pact will not stop what is happening in the Mediterranean or what is happening in the English Channel, and, therefore, across the border into Ireland.”
“Apart from things like that, the reality is the migration pact is a further step towards the dilution of Irish sovereignty and the transfer of that sovereignty to the European Commission, the European Parliament and the final arbiters, the judges in Luxembourg who are accountable to nobody in the end. When you ask why somebody who chooses to come to Ireland to seek asylum, when there is no accommodation for them, becomes entitled to compensation from the Irish people, the answer is it is a matter of European law by which an Irish judge is bound. The European Union should not have been given this competence. It should be a matter for each member state to work out where it stands on this issue. It was a mistake to give this competence to the European Union. I ask the Minister to forget about Iveagh House.”
“The Minister here said that he has the difficult role, and I accept it completely, of striking a balance between the rights of would-be asylum seekers, on the one hand, and the rights of member states, on the other hand, to look after different considerations. I accept that he feels this and I accept that he feels he is striking a balance. Senator Boyhan mentioned the instance of whether we allow family reunification at three years or two years and whether that is consistent or inconsistent with European law. I take the Minister's point that he is advised the change he is making is consistent with our rights under European Union law.”
“We now find ourselves in circumstances where our sovereignty, to which its amendment refers, has been handcuffed by European treaties to this proposition that the European Union in a flourish of generosity said, "The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with the Treaty [establishing the European community]". The simple fact is that the European Union treaties are supposed to determine how the member states operate among themselves. The European Union is not a sovereign body. It is by no means entitled to advance the proposition that all member states must apply the conventions at all times in their dealings with outsiders.”
“Everything was discussed at the time but nobody asked, "Hold it, what is the European Union doing writing into its fundamental law obligations under the 1951 Geneva Convention?" Nobody ever at the time said, "This is a disaster in the making". I have to say, I did not say it and I supported the Lisbon treaty. I never looked around the particular corner of that right to asylum because we were told at the time that this charter only applied where member states were applying European Union law. This is an important point. That sounded very attractive as a proposition, whereby if they were applying European Union law, well, all right, maybe there should be some charter of fundamental rights and freedoms. In fact, that situation has dramatically changed. This is where the Sinn Féin amendment is of interest.”
“The reality is that Denmark was sensible enough to opt out of a considerable amount of the area of freedom and justice that came in in the context of the Lisbon treaty. Nobody has ever explained to me why it was that when the Lisbon treaty had brought into effect the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, it was considered that the right to asylum was something the Union could uphold. Why could the Union uphold this? It was a Union of member states. Nobody ever applied to the Union for asylum. They were applying to individual member states. I remember the Lisbon treaty debates and there were all sorts of discussions on everything from abortion to defence to neutrality.”
“The crucial thing is, and this is the point about the Sinn Féin amendment which intrigues me and I sympathise with it, that here we are being told that Ireland is a sovereign State and we are also, of course, members of the European Union but we have opted in to something that very severely compromises our sovereignty. The migration pact is a package that further cements the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg as the final arbiter of what the member states’ obligations to applicants for asylum actually are and what they are entitled to. It imposes its own legal framework on member states when administering the law relating to asylum seekers. That is the point about the Sinn Féin amendment.”