Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Irish people are good, decent and caring people. There are thousands of examples of where we have welcomed people seeking asylum into our country. That needs to be acknowledged. I broadly welcome the movement today of migrants who have been living in tents along Mount Street. The situation is not tenable due to the appalling conditions for the migrants and the serious disruptions to the community surrounding Mount Street. We simply cannot have tented camps in our towns and cities. People entitled to asylum should be provided with shelter.

We can create a fair, efficient and enforced immigration system by exercising the opt-out from a majority of the pact's proposals. It is our view that the majority of measures contained in the EU's migration and asylum pact are not in Ireland's interests. Some decisions are better taken locally and one size does not fit all. Communication is the key. Honest and open dialogue is critical when decisions are being made on centres being opened in communities but unfortunately that is not always the case. It must be for an Irish Government to decide on key aspects of our immigration system, including rejecting unsuccessful applicants sooner, compiling our list of safe countries and deciding the countries from which Ireland should take refugees.

It is remarkable that the Minister, Deputy McEntee, has confirmed that she did not even consider whether Ireland might adopt some parts and not other parts of this agreement. This approach is reckless and not thought through. It is a mistake that the Government has decided on an all-or-nothing approach. We need to protect migrant workers. We must ensure that all people coming to work and contribute to our country do so in the correct manner. Claiming asylum should not and cannot be a backdoor into our country for whatever reasons.

We would support measures that are in the interests of Ireland where international co-operation makes sense, such as the use of a database and in returning those, who seek to make an asylum application here, to the first country where an international protection applicant has made the application. Sinn Féin will be voting "No" to the Government's proposal to sign up fully into the EU migration and asylum pact because we must retain our sovereignty over these matters if we are to have an immigration system that is fair, efficient and enforced.

Simon Harris along with other Ministers kept repeating the line that Ireland has a right to set its own immigration policy, yet next week it plans to give away that power. Given that we share the common travel area with Britain, which is no longer an EU member, this approach is absolute madness.

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