Ireland’s Open Border Deep State: How the IHREC Is Stacking the Deck Against Asylum Reform

Approved by the Cabinet late April before being submitted to the Oireachtas Home Affairs Committee covering migration, the International Protection Bill (2025) has been marketed by Minister Jim O’Callaghan as a once in a generation opportunity to reform the Republic’s chaotic asylum regime.

In May this publication provided a breakdown of the Bill with a lengthy critique of how in many respects it copperfastens the asylum free-for-all the state is enduring.

Transposing the EU Migration Pact into law the Bill is expected to make it to the autumn Dáil session ahead of a commitment to implement the Pact by June 2026. Inserting into law eight key EU regulations on asylum (Reception Conditions, Qualification, Asylum Procedure, Eurodac, etc.) other features of the Bill include screening at ports of entry, limits on legal appeals and a supposedly streamlined application process.

As the elbow pushing and lobbying for the Bill begins in earnest expect the Republic’s well oiled asylum lobby to make their voice heard and true to form the IHREC was first out of the gates with a list of open border recommendations. IHREC has mastered the art of being unelected, unaccountable, and yet somehow always in charge.

A publicly funded body established under 2014 equality legislation IHREC earns its keep through annual government grants to the tune of €6 million plus whatever EU cash it can scrap off the floor. In Ireland’s migration debate, IHREC doesn’t referee the match; it moves the goalposts, rewrites the rulebook, and funds the away team.

Demanding more legal representation for largely bogus asylum seekers and stymie depooration procedures through cynical ‘child protection’ concerns IHREC is likely to hound the International Protection Bill through committee stage.

A core pillar of the feedback loop of pro-migration lobbying that has polluted legislative responses to Irish asylum policy since the 2000s, IHREC has featured before in The Burkean for funding the appeals case of jihadist Ali Charaf Damach in attempts to drill more holes in the Republic’s border regime.

The ICCL's Liam Herrick suggesting that physical violence against those he labels "the far-right" might have its place sometimes in Le Chéile’s first public conference in Jan 2021 pic.twitter.com/XBefcn9jJe

— Pangur Bán 🧃 (@PangurBn10) November 6, 2023

Prominent IHREC veterans include Sinéad Gibney, now of the SocDems, who cashed in with the organisation telling the public Ireland’s asylum system was fine, if anything too strict, as the migration crisis slowly consumed the state.

Despite the human rights posturing IHREC is a growing non-democratic lobby that wields significant influence on migration policy without direct accountability. It functions more like a parallel policymaker than an impartial rights monitor.

Originally tasked with upholding equality and rights, IHREC has stretched its remit to shape immigration norms, often equating border control with discrimination—despite no electoral mandate to do so.

Studying the legislative pathway from Brussels to IPAS the asylum system governed by but only administered by the Department of Justice, in reality its IHREC’s submissions that sets direction.

IHREC is nearly 100% state-funded but uses public money to lobby against state migration priorities. Weaponising human rights jargon against migration control IHREC’s new approach is increasingly legalistic and pointed towards more strategic lawfare against the asylum system to facilitate the sponger culture so detrimental to the public welfare.

If Ireland is serious about restoring control over its asylum system, it must reckon with the structural power of bodies like IHREC—whose quiet influence increasingly overrides the public’s wish for migration control.

Oireachtas members on committee and the public must ask who governs migration policy in Ireland the elected government, or a taxpayer-funded institution more accountable to their internal groupchats than the Republic itself.