The Minister for Justice has rejected claims that the Immigration Bill being debated in the Dail today has Nazi overtones or that it confers draconian powers on the Garda or immigration officials.
Speaking in the Dáil, Mr McDowell said the legislation, which has raised the concerns of some human rights and disability groups, was very important.
He said he would have preferred to have had a lengthy consultation process, but this wasn't possible because of the recent High Court judgment which found certain ministerial orders on immigration control were unconstitutional.
Mr McDowell said the law was not only important from the point of view of controlling immigration, but because of the need to control the movement of people who are engaged in "international terrorism". It was important from the point of view of stopping such people at entry points, managing their movements within the State and to allow the Garda to monitor them by asking for identification.
The recent High Court judgment found the ministerial orders allowing gardai and immigration officials to ask non-nationals for identification to be unconstitutional.
The minister told the house that the ultimate law was the safety of the people. "We cannot go on for weeks on end without a law which allows the Garda Siochana to monitor the presence of non-nationals within the State," Mr McDowell said.
He said he would "much prefer" to be taking a long-term step to address the issue, but that the recent High Court judgment had to be addressed as quickly as possible.
Mr McDowell said the new Bill was a very straightforward matter of transferring the contents of the Aliens Order, which was struck down by the High Court, into a primary statute.
"It's not a draconian or a punitive piece of legislation as has been suggested. It has not been a Nazi regime in Ireland in relation to immigration and we have not had laws that have ground down people or been used arbitrarily," he said.
He said the fact was that we have the same laws "in large measure" for the last 60 years "and nobody has ever said the law was Nazi, draconian or jackboot". Independent senator Mr Joe O'Toole made remarks suggesting the Bill was rooted in an Aryan philosophy that would be "worthy of Nazism at its worst" at the weekend.
Mr McDowell also told the Dail he had listened to the points that had been made about the legislation by the opposition, by various lobby groups and by the Human Rights Commission and he was not discarding what had been said. He was doing what he could to address the issue in a short time frame.
The minister has tabled a number of amendments to the Bill. He said he would take as many "reasonable" amendments as he could take within the timeframe available in order to make the law as good as it could be.