Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is not personal, as the Minister of State is here in a certain role, but the proposition made was not good enough. Many of the measures look good on paper, but that is all that they do. Let us consider the supports offered to undocumented migrants. I agree with the Minister of State that an undocumented migrant who manages to get into our system is entitled to gold plated refugee and asylum status, but granting access to the system and putting supports in place are happening too slowly. The system is quaking. I have worked in it. I have put myself forward and spent a year waiting to be vetted as a host for an undocumented migrant. It is ridiculous and crazy that it should take so long to vet someone when there are many people who would happily such these young people into their homes.

I will not echo the points made about direct provision. We met young people who had been in the system. They are fantastic people with so much to offer our society, but that we do not give them the right to work is criminal. We know the court's view on this issue and the Minister of State has referred to an interdepartmental task force, but could the task force, please, hurry up? It is not on. The isolation and the damage being done to individuals in the direct provision system are soul destroying.

Another key suggestion made in the report involves the introduction of a humanitarian visa scheme to allow persons legally resident in Ireland to be reunited with extended family members who are living in war zones or in danger. There should be a broad-based humanitarian visa scheme for anyone who needs asylum. It is something for which I argued wholeheartedly previously, but the committee's more limited recommendation should be implemented. I have occasionally been contacted by people who are caught up in the family reunification process. One case sticks out in my mind because of the frustrating role played by the Department in preventing a young Syrian woman from being reunited with her sick mother and siblings. Over the course of 14 long months which the family spent in limbo in Greece the Department threw every trick in the book at them. At one point, it turned down the application because the Greek authorities, the first language of which was not English, had misstated that the young woman was a recognised refugee in Ireland when she was, in fact, legally resident here. I echo the Chairman's comments on the committee's feelings about such matters. It is irrelevant to a reunification request whether someone is legally resident as a recognised refugee or legally resident for any other reason. A person has a right to family reunification in these circumstances. I support the comments made by the Chairman in clarifying that point in the context of the recommendation made. For the family I mentioned, the hair splitting that continued for months, being left in limbo in Greece and having to deal with thousands more pages of paperwork - with the tolerance of the Greek authorities - were disgraceful.

That the worst named legislation ever passed, the International Protection Act 2015 - not - has closed the door on family reunification, except in limited circumstances, makes the situation even more sickening. At a time when there are record numbers of refugees, taking the NASC's proposal on board becomes all the more urgent.

We do not have to develop all the points here. However, when we focus on the recommendations, it would be wrong for us not to look at how Europe has got to this point with refugees and migrants. We should put the debate in its wider context and look at the noose Europe is tying around its borders and the security industrial complex profiting from driving migrants into the sea or back to Libya and Turkey, all fully funded and supported by European Governments. Without taking that on board we miss the real roots of the crisis and are doomed never to come up with a real and sane response to it. Let us face it, in the past four years European policymakers have been operating under some sort of mass delusion that the migrant crisis has come from somewhere unforeseen and that it is like some form of natural disaster. It is not natural at all but has been spawned by the interference in the Middle East and so on. It has been spawned by the increased securitisation of Europe's borders. It is worth remembering that the types of irregular land and sea migrations we see now did not really exist in Europe in the 1990s, in part because there was less interference in the Middle East and so on. The global wars that are under way at the moment, the Schengen Agreement, the tightening of Europe's borders and the massive profiteering arising from that are also to blame.

Europe has spent €11 billion on deportations since 2000. Frontex has seen its budget grow massively since it was founded. Between 2007 and 2013, the EU allocated 60% of its home affairs budget, which is €4 billion, to managing migration, of which half went to policing external borders, compared with the €70 million that was spent on a refugee fund. It is absolutely not good enough.

I think I speak for all of us on the committee when I say we will be actively pursuing this. We will be breathing down the necks of those in the Department to ensure all these recommendations, which are modest and urgently necessary, are implemented. I note the Department has moved on some of them but it is not quick enough and we want to see it elevated on the Department's agenda. The Minister of State has played a role in this before and we appeal for the effort to be redoubled and that we all move to end a completely unacceptable situation.

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