Ms Sue Conlan:

I will deal with Deputy Wallace. I am aware that he has been to Calais and the impact that had. One of the great things about Ireland and Irish people is that they do not wait, they go. Dublin to Calais refugee solidarity group and others have been out to Calais in order to provide direct assistance to people who were there. I have also done work with haulage companies and lorry drivers on the grounds that they have picked up fines for bringing people in inadvertently when they never intended to. I have done it on the grounds that we should not penalise somebody for doing their job when there are not people smugglers or traffickers; they just cannot police their vehicles the whole of the time. Various bits of work have been done.

One of the groups that has been to Calais, Dunkirk and also to Cherbourg, because at Cherbourg one can get through to Ireland more directly, is the Immigrant Council of Ireland which followed a UK lawyer's model of seeing whether there were people attempting to come to Ireland who had family members there. Most of the people it came across wanted to go to the UK. I have no doubt that if any identify themselves as wanting to join family, an attempt will be made to persuade the Irish Government to allow them to come without waiting for their asylum claim to be dealt with in France 18 months later . That includes unaccompanied children and, unfortunately, France falls down when it comes to unaccompanied children. The reason there is such a large number in those camps in Calais is that it does not address them as a specific group despite its need for them. I think there are people looking at how to do that.

There are people in Greece who are indicating they would be willing to come to Ireland and so the Department could say, "Let us be a little more proactive". Portugal put it out there that it would take people. It produced a video inviting people to come to Portugal. As Portugal has lost so many Portuguese, it knows it needs people for the labour market to rebuild the country. Things like that could be done even in countries such as Greece to say it is open, that it is not anywhere near the commitment it has made to take 2,900, so let us be more proactive in Greece and actually determine who can come and avoid the necessity to end up in camps such as at Calais.

The issue of the Kurds and the Afghans is a huge question. I am sure I am not expected to answer it in full. The big concern about the EU-Turkey deal is that, again, Syrians were prioritised. Turkey has no commitment not to return Afghans and Iraqis to those countries. We know already that they have prevented Syrians from crossing as well. Children have been shot dead at the border with Turkey and many have been beaten by Turkish border guards. That is part of a much wider debate on the whole issue of refugee and forced migration. What we must avoid, which is why I commented on it at the outset, is a two-tier system where we say deserving refugees and undeserving refugees or refugees and economic migrants because these are all on a continuum at some point in time. That is part of a much bigger refugee question and Ireland is co-hosting a UN conference in September in New York on the whole crisis. That goes beyond the remit of this committee but that is where the Dáil and Seanad can say what they want to on the hosting role. It is rather like being a chairperson and remaining neutral but it is a great opportunity for us to say what Ireland is doing that someone else can hold up as a model or can work towards. That conference in September is key to the questions and the issues we have discussed here but also those much bigger issues that we do not differentiate. What we are seeing is people claiming to be Syrian who are not Syrian because they know that Syrians are getting preferential treatment. That does them no good and it does the Syrians a disservice as well but it is bound to happen. If one can get through the gates by being a Syrian, one will try to do that to save oneself and one's family or to be reunited. I cannot do justice to that question because it is much bigger but I would be happy to touch base with the committee on that issue.

That concludes this session. I thank Ms Conlan and Mr. O'Neill for their attendance and their submissions. With regard to the housing element, and in particular the homelessness issue, if there are any recommendations which the witnesses feel could be of use to the committee, time is short and I ask them to forward their recommendations to us as a matter of urgency. The committee will conclude its work in the next couple of weeks and it is that aspect in particular that we would welcome. I thank the witnesses, once again, for their attendance today.