Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

There are challenges within our immigration and asylum system but they are challenges of the Government's own making. They are not the fault of people seeking asylum or of migrants seeking to build a life for themselves and their families here in Ireland. We simply would not function as a country without migration. We would not staff our public services or our private enterprises. We probably all have friends, family members and loved ones who come from abroad, people who we simply could not imagine life without. Our communities and lives would be infinitely worse without migration.

There are voices in this Chamber and around the country who claim otherwise. They see the housing crisis and the crisis in our public services as an opportunity to stir up hatred and direct it towards asylum seekers. Deputy Mattie McGrath stood in front of a rally in Roscrea protesting against accommodation for asylum seekers and warned that Ireland was being colonised again. That is an absolutely disgusting comment and a dangerous one. Deputy McGrath should be ashamed of himself. He can stand here and proclaim all he wants that he is not anti-refugee or anti-migrant but his words and actions speak for themselves.

When announcing his new political party, Deputy Michael Collins said one of his main priorities would be capping the number of migrants entering the country. He is another Deputy who would be up in arms at the suggestion that he has anti-migrant views, despite very clearly pandering to an anti-immigrant vote at the expense, ultimately, of the safety of migrants and refugees. There have been ten arson attacks on refugee accommodation in the past 12 months and Deputies in this Chamber and councillors across the country, from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and the Labour Party, are choosing to stir up anger and misinformation even further.

We are at a real crisis point in public and political rhetoric around refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland and we need to take it very seriously because it is only a matter a time before people get hurt. We need a clear plan from the Government when it comes to housing asylum seekers and Ukrainians across the country. Completely lost, unfortunately, in this debate are the 600 vulnerable men seeking protection in Ireland who have been sleeping rough in sub-zero temperatures with no protection.

The Government's policy is a complete shambles. I do not understand it, the Minister's colleagues do not understand it and the whole country does not understand it. It has been two years since Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine and we still do not have a medium- or long-term plan. Then we see that the Minister for Justice's response is to add two countries, Algeria and Botswana, to the safe country list, meaning all asylum seekers from these countries will be fast-tracked through the process in a couple of weeks. I wonder for whom is Algeria safe because according to the Department of Foreign Affairs, it clearly is not safe for Irish citizens. The Department's website warns against "non-essential travel" due to the risk of terrorist attacks in certain areas there. Algeria is not safe for LGBT people either. Homosexuality is illegal there and is subject to three years' imprisonment. Is putting those two countries on the fast-track list all the Government can come up with? That is absolutely ridiculous.

Where are the six reception centres, the 700 modular homes and the plan for combatting misinformation and engaging proactively with communities? These measures are essential to ensure asylum seekers are integrated into their new communities safely. We cannot continue to allow scenes of traumatised children being ushered through angry, racist mobs to reach safety in accommodation services. The chaotic reactive approach from the Government has only fuelled these problems and has played into the hands of the far right. Several facilities earmarked for accommodation have been abandoned by the Government or the plan has been changed for who will be accommodated in them due to local opposition. By bowing to that pressure, the Government is emboldening the protests and the completely unfounded conspiracy that asylum seekers are somehow dangerous. A centre in Ringsend for homeless accommodation was burnt out on the unfounded suspicion that it would be housing asylum seekers. An incredibly dangerous atmosphere is building and it needs to be de-escalated before people get hurt. Having a smooth functional process for new arrivals and a plan for the future of the asylum system will be essential in calming those tensions.

The rise in number of asylum seekers over the past number of years is often phrased as a crisis. That is not helpful because the reality is that there will always be wars and displacement, not to mention climate change. There will always be people fleeing persecution and seeking a better life. As an economically successful and safe country, Ireland will be an attractive destination. The narrative being put around that Ireland is full, that we should cap migration and put a stop to accepting asylum seekers is completely false. Ireland is not full, nor anywhere close to it. We have not even reached the population we had pre-Famine. We have the means to accommodate our own population and new arrivals. We just need the public policy and political will to provide the infrastructure and services that are required to do that.

Our health service is an excellent example of the priceless contributions that migrants make to Ireland, with one third of registered nurses and midwives identifying as non-Irish from over 117 countries. There are over 100 nationalities working in the staff of Temple Street children's hospital. Despite what some say, the number of asylum seekers is relatively low. With 13,600 in 2023, we are still below the EU average. Ireland should be able to handle this number. Of course, the war in Ukraine put pressure on the system but it has reached this point because the system was creaking at the seams from the get-go.

In November 1999, direct provision was introduced by Fianna Fáil and it has been a stain on our country ever since. It is a continuation of Ireland's brutal history of institutionalisation. Under the original plan, 4,000 permanent spaces were to be constructed by the State quickly. Twenty-four years later, they are still nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have had 24 years of an inhumane degrading system run for profit by private entities that exploited and mistreated asylum seekers every step of the way. This is a system that kept asylum seekers trapped in remote centres like the Mosney accommodation centre, excluded from communities, the workforce and independence. Successive Governments since 1999 have stood by and allowed the system to continue. Some commissioned reports and made a few tweaks around the edges, but none addressed the fundamental problem with the direct provision system. It is a private short-term system for what needs to be a permanent public service.

The Government made a strong commitment in the programme for Government to end direct provision and replace it with a not-for-profit humane system and I fully believe the Minister's personal commitment and belief in that is genuine. While we all understood why this could not happen given external factors like the war in Ukraine, there are steps that should have been taken since then. We are waiting for the Minister's revised paper on ending direct provision, which I understand will be presented in a number of weeks. At the time we accepted that the Minister would not be able to end direct provision as he wanted to do, Dr. Catherine Day published yet another report saying we needed those six reception centres.

Two years later, none of those reception centres is here. The continued reliance on hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation is incredibly expensive and detrimental to towns that rely on them not just for tourism. When there is a hotel in the area, it could be for christenings, funerals, weddings and all of those things.

Finally, everyone has a right to protest and not everyone who finds themselves in opposition to housing asylum seekers is far-right. Many have serious concerns about the pressures on limited local services but I appeal to people who feel these concerns with regard to services to think carefully about where they choose to direct that anger, where they choose to protest and who they stand beside at rallies and demonstrations. They should not allow their complaints about the Government to be conflated with anger towards innocent migrants and asylum seekers. If they find themselves feeling sympathetic to some of the voices who are trying to tell them that somehow, migrants are dangerous, they should not believe them.

The Government has a responsibility to address concerns about services, to communicate with communities and to take a holistic approach to housing asylum seekers. People do not just need roofs over their heads, they need school places, GPs, psychologists and public transport. We need a coherent plan from the Government on the issue and we need it quickly.

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