Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----but this is the first occasion we have had an opportunity to raise it in this committee and it has been one of great importance for some time.

At European Justice and Home Affairs meetings, bilateral meetings between individual Ministers are often held. This issue has been the subject of bilateral discussions between me and my UK counterparts and the Secretary of State for Justice, Mr. Grayling, and I will have a bilateral or side meeting to discuss the issue again in Luxembourg at a meeting that will take place early next week.

Turning to the issue of Syria, this is an issue in which I have very substantial interest wearing both my hats as Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence. When I was in the Middle East in March last visiting our troops in southern Lebanon and on the Golan Heights in Israel, I also met the then Lebanese defence Minister and had discussions with him about the refugee crisis and how it was impacting on Lebanon. I received extensive briefings from our own people. As Deputy Mac Lochlainn will know, we already had a small group engaged with UNDOF in Syria until the larger group of the Defence Forces arrived. The full group of 115 troops are now located on the Golan Heights on the Syria side or the neutral zone going through Damascus. They arrived this weekend and I know all members of the committee would wish them well in the very important job they are doing.

I agree with much of what Deputy Mac Lochlainn said, other than any criticism of the European Union. It has provided the greatest financial contribution of any group anywhere in the world towards assisting with supports for the refugees, assisting the UNHCR and the NGOs. Across the European Union there has been a very substantial transfer of funding. We have contributed in the difficult circumstances in which this State is in €10.8 million, approximately €1 million to NGOs and the remainder to the UNHCR in dealing with refugees.

The situation in Lebanon is difficult, complex and it is not an exaggeration to say it is on a knife edge. There have been sectarian divisions in Lebanon for many years. The government is or was representative of the different religious and political groupings in the Lebanon. Elections were to be held in Lebanon originally and the objective was to hold them in June, but they had to be postponed and could not take place. There is a series of issues which create great concerns with regard to Lebanon. In discussions I had with the Lebanese defence Minister we went into this in great detail in March and some of our mutual concerns have proved to be correct. I hope some of our greater concerns do not prove to be correct. It is estimated that approximately 30,000 members of Hezbollah are engaged in Syria at this stage. There is one estimate that has been given internationally. That number may be exaggerated and may be smaller, but from being, if I may put it this way, surreptitiously involved in the Syrian conflict, Hezbollah is now quite open about its engagement and involvement. It is on the side of President Assad. Hezbollah represents the Shi'a community in Lebanon, the Alawite group is represented by President Assad and there is a religious connectivity between the two. The opposition to President Assad is substantially Sunni. It is estimated there are more than 1,000 different groupings engaged in that confrontation and they are divided among themselves. They are not only confronting the Assad forces in Syria, they are, on occasions, at war with each other, between different groups of jihadists and al-Qaeda-type groupings to secular groupings. The Kurds are trying to stay out of the conflict and the Christian community are caught up somewhere in the middle of the conflict and are very fearful for their future in the context of the approach being taken by some of the extreme Muslim fundamentalists groupings. The Christian groups tend to identify with President Assad because they see him as less of a threat than the fundamentalists. Both sides have committed atrocities and I believe both sides have committed war crimes. There are parts of Syria that are destroyed. It will take many years to rebuild that country. As to whether it will be rebuilt as a country or it will fragment in its entirety, no one knows the answer to that.

Thousands of refugees are pouring out of that country every week. From memory, it is estimated that in the region of 900,000 refugees are in the Lebanon, 500,000 in Turkey, in the region of 350,000 in Jordan and when I last checked there were 180,000 in Egypt and a similar number in Iraq, although the numbers going to Iraq seem to be increasing. There is much connectivity between the Lebanon and Syria. Families have taken in people from Syria. There are various camps in Syria. There are Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and some of them have been subject to attack with lives being lost. Some refugees have now migrated to Lebanon.

One of the tragedies of the Middle East is that no matter how one looks at the situation, it is extraordinary that in Lebanon and Syria one has the relations of the Palestinians who were disrupted by the conflict which took place in 1948, who essentially are being kept in what are described as refugee camps but they are really closed towns or cities. People are not living in tents in the way we might imagine but in Arab countries they have never been allowed to integrate into the countries to which they have moved. One now has third and fourth generation refugees. In every other part of the world where one had a refugee crisis during the 1940s, where people could not go back to their countries of origin, they were at least allowed to integrate. That is part of the problem and part of the legacy of the Middle East which should perhaps be discussed by the committee on another day.

What we have seen in Lebanon is that there have been explosions in the Shi'a controlled section of Beirut. There has been loss of life. We have had the same in a part of Lebanon that is substantially Sunni where there has been retaliation. If matters further deteriorate in Lebanon there is a serious risk that the situation could collapse into civil war again. Those in positions of political leadership are striving very hard to avoid that but it is a substantial concern to this State and the international community. What is happening in Syria is an enormous humanitarian tragedy. A total of 4 million displaced Syrians are still within Syria, as opposed to the numbers that have migrated out of Syria and are in refugee camps. Tragically, there is no sign of an end to the conflict. The issue of chemical weapons has been addressed in recent days by the UN but it does not bring us any closer to conflict resolution. It is difficult to see, because of the divisions between the different groupings, how a conflict resolution in the short term is going to be achieved.

To return to the meeting in Luxembourg, we will again consider the extent of the refugee crisis. There has been a substantial increase in numbers since June when we last discussed the matter. We will again look at what additional steps the EU could take to be of help. We will also look at the issue of foreign fighters. There is genuine concern in that regard across the European Union. A number of individuals from this country are now fighting in the civil war in Syria. Some of them are known to be fighting with what are known as jihadist groups. The numbers from Ireland are small compared with some other European Union countries but there is genuine issue and concern surrounding how they will conduct themselves when they return either to this State or other European Union countries. We saw an horrific act of terrorism only recently in England when a young soldier - a drummer - lost his life. Those who have left other European countries to fight on the side of some of the fundamentalist groups in Syria might pose serious security threats within the European Union. It is an issue of which we are conscious and that we are addressing.

I will make one final point on the issue. We could discuss it at great length. It might be worthwhile for the committee to have a meeting in which we deal generally with concerns in this area. There are great concerns as the destabilisation of Syria poses risks to Lebanon but there are an enormous number of refugees in Jordan, which at the moment seems to be stable. I thought members might be interested to know that it is my intention to go to the Middle East in the last week in November. A changeover is taking place in southern Lebanon. UNIFIL is a joint Irish-Finnish grouping in southern Lebanon. We have been the lead country in that grouping and the Finns are taking over the lead on 26 November. Our troops are out there and I am going to visit the new contingent to replace the ones who went in March. I will be there for the hand-over. I am exploring at the moment the possibility of visiting Jordan, as well as meeting with my counterpart Minister in Beirut in Lebanon so as to get fully briefed on issues relating to both the defence side of my work, security issues and the UNIFIL engagements. At all stages we must be conscious of any threats that are posed to our troops. A destabilisation in Lebanon could create a further destabilisation and problems in the southern Lebanon area, which has remained fairly stable. I will also visit Israel and will get briefings on how things are going in the Golan and other issues relating to the region.