Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate even after ten or 11 months of seeking a debate. It is not really a debate because it is just statements with no questions and no answers. I am delighted that the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has finally arrived in the Chamber for this debate. There has been talk about misinformation and disinformation. None of the Ministers speaking today had scripts. I hope the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has. They were asked for them. We cannot fact-check them. One Minister told us there were 103,000 Ukrainians while the Minister of State, Deputy O'Brien, who can correct this,said there were 75,000 Ukrainians here. Which is right? They talk about misinformation. They have made a complete hames of this. The Minister, Deputy Harris, spoke about health, education and everything else. They are not there for our own people, never mind for the numbers the Government wants to bring in.

The response to a parliamentary question to the Minister for Justice provided to me showed that, in 2018, there were 895 undocumented arrivals. This increased to 1,570 in 2019. Incidentally, when Deputy Ring was in Cabinet, he said we needed a debate urgently. The Government has ignored this rolling along. The number of undocumented arrivals increased to 2,082 in 2021 before reaching 4,968 in 2022 and ever onwards. The reply to the parliamentary question only dealt with those coming through Dublin Airport, not the ports, Belfast or anywhere else. It is farcical that the Minister cannot give us those figures. The Garda is supposed to be monitoring the ports with another agency monitoring Dublin Airport. The Government is talking about increasing the fines on airlines to stop people coming in. Nobody in Ireland can go on a plane anywhere without proper documentation and rightly so.

Ar an gcéad dul síos, I want to say I welcome migrants and I deal with them every day of the week. I assist companies through different Departments to try to get work visas and work permits. They play a very important part in this country and they are very welcome. Misinformation has been spread and peddled here about ordinary decent people in Roscrea. I lay the blame on the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, who decided to force those children through. They did not ask for a mediator or ask for a public representative to mediate. It was just a show of strength. They blackguarded ordinary people. There was not a far-right person in that town. Deputy Nolan, who is behind me, attended there also on another day. Ordinary people have been denigrated by people in this House and elsewhere.

I will not listen to the likes of Deputy Cairns and Deputies from the Labour Party and others. It is funny that PBP Deputies did not even come in for the debate today, or the so-called debate. It is a phoney argument. They may think that demonising people as far-right will solve the problem, but it will not. It has been ham-fisted and it has been left to the two Ministers to the left of the Minister for Justice, Deputies O'Gorman and Joe O'Brien. I thank them for engaging with me; a very helpful engagement. However, they have fled to the hills and are giving no answers. There is misinformation today with different figures being provided. With all the different Ministers who came in, none of them had a script. Are they afraid we might read it tomorrow and remind them of what they said? I cannot understand that. Timber is not that scarce that they would not have trees cut down to give us a script.

See this speech in context