Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her attendance. It is not often that we have a senior Minister at this point of a Private Members' debate. I am glad to see her here. I also give her my personal support in light of the completely unacceptable attacks on her family home.

This morning we are discussing the issue of migration. It is a difficult and delicate discussion. On the one hand, we have those seeking asylum and they are not a homogenous group. Some are fleeing war and persecution. Others are seeking a better life, they are economic migrants. Others are people who have been trafficked. Others have paid large sums of money to arrive here on the promise of a better place to live. Others have been to the UK or other European countries and have decided to travel to Ireland because they believe it will be a better place for them to pursue their asylum applications. Those who try to portray all asylum seekers as people fleeing war and persecution are simply not telling the truth but then there is the other side of it in that those who portray asylum seekers as mainly opportunists and use some of the awful language we hear are also not telling the truth.

Part of the problem around asylum seeking is that people put themselves in one camp or the other. I am right and you are wrong. That leads to many negative outcomes. It splits communities and engenders anger, which can lead to hatred. I am afraid we are drifting towards a situation where we are being told that good people are those who welcome all asylum seekers regardless of whether they are genuine asylum seekers and the others - and there are many in that group - are pushed and told they are right wing, far right or the latest term is populist right. Many of those people want a robust, firm and fair asylum system, a smaller number oppose all asylum seekers and there are lots of shades between but they all seem to be lumped into a group of what we might call the deplorables. We cannot make progress in this way. We have to find a middle ground with a rules-enforced system.

Equally, we cannot make progress with a Government that has basically lost control of the asylum procedure because that adds to the pressure and it builds up to intolerable levels, as we have seen on Mount Street and in other communities throughout the country.

Last week, at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice, the Minister revealed that approximately 80% of asylum seekers were now coming across the Border. I asked her whether we had sent anybody back to the UK under the current agreement in place with the UK. The Minister's response to me was, "I do not have those figures to hand". Yet, according to newspaper reports of what the Minister and Taoiseach have said, it turns out that nobody has been returned under that agreement, which has been in place since 2000. I know it has not always been the case that 80% of asylum seekers were coming across the Border but even if the figure was 8%, if the system was working and operational, the Minister would have ensured that some people were, rightly, returned. We hear the lame excuse of Covid. The pandemic finished nearly two years ago. The court decision was not made until March 2024. What was supposed to happen during most of 2022, all of 2023 and part of 2024 to operationalise that agreement? Nothing happened. Nobody was sent back.

My colleague, Deputy McNamara, raised the issue of Dublin III and compared the tiny numbers being returned from Ireland, which stood at two in 2022, with the numbers returned from Germany, which stood at more than 4,000 in 2022. That displays an astonishing level of incompetence in enforcing the legislation and agreements that are in place. The Minister is now asking us to sign up to a pact when she is not doing the business. We cannot trust her.

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