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

Sentiment score: -0.11