Dan Neville (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Chairman on putting this issue on the agenda. The suffering and exploitation of people is a very important issue. I understand people are being charged €1,000 to get on a boat on which they will likely die. That is the reality of the situation. People are being exploited.

The failure of the international community to recognise the problem that is creating this crisis must also be addressed at a broader level than the European one. The problem in northern Africa, especially in Libya, is a bigger issue than can be addressed at European level. We have had the inhumanity and the toleration of what has been taking place, which has led to the deaths that have occurred to date. This is not a new issue. The numbers are increasing. People have been dying in their endeavour to get to Europe during the past two and half years. The issue is not a new one but the scale of it has alerted the European Union which should have examined this. Italy has been asking for this. We should commend the Italian people on the response they have given to what they have been presented with for some time. If this were a European issue and not an African one and people were leaving a European country and dying in their hundreds, we can imagine what would be the international community's response to it. Internationally, we seem to have a different attitude towards Africa. That has been seen in many other areas of exploitation going back to colonialism with respect to the exploitation of Africa. There is the sense of there being a post-colonial negative attitude towards Africa. It is manifested in our delay as Europeans to respond to what we know has been an issue. We have known about the exploitation of people fleeing to Europe. We know that people do not flee their countries just for the sake of doing so. They do so because they have very serious issues of violence, murder and exploitation to deal with in their own countries.

The Chairman is to be commended on bringing forward this issue. I support the view that we should try to have a European-wide response from the committees involved rather than only from the Ministers because we want to support the Ministers in responding to the need that is out there. Is anyone examining the drawing up of a solution to this issue because this issue will continue and escalate? A solution to overcoming the difficulties in Africa must be found.