Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I pay tribute to Anti-Deportation Ireland, the Anti Racist Network and other groups that have spoken out on behalf of people in direct provision or, most important, the people in direct provision whose campaigning and protests brought this issue to the fore. I remind the Minister of State that he and I travelled to a big protest in Genoa in 2001 for the G8 meeting. One of the big slogans at marches attended by hundreds of thousands of people was that no human being is illegal. I think the Minister of State chanted that slogan along with the rest of us. The sentiment driving it is that all human beings deserve human rights and deserve to be treated with equality, dignity and decency. The notion of human beings being illegal and consequently treated in a different fashion from other human beings is abhorrent.

The context of our discussion is a scandal and another shameful incident in Irish history, where a group of people have been denied the most basic dignity and human rights for a prolonged period of time in a way that requires immediate remedy. We owe these people for the wrong done to them over the past 11 years. This should not be a change of policy but we owe them an apology and remedy for what they have been put through in the centres. That is the context of my questions.

The Minister of State has put a lot of emphasis on the working group and it is very alarming that some of the concerns of people who have campaigned on this issue, including the asylum seekers and the people concerned, expressed about the working group before it was set up now appear to have been realised by the decision of the Irish Refugee Council to come off the working group. That is very disturbing and raises serious questions about the credibility of the working group. I want to know what the Minister of State thinks about this. Some of the concerns were expressed by campaigning groups before it was set up and the Minister of State has placed emphasis on the working group's recommendations and independence but now a credible player, the Irish Refugee Council, has resigned from it. Does that worry the Minister of State?