Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate him coming here and I wish Austria well with the Presidency as it takes on the onerous task of managing European affairs for the next six months. I note in the ambassador's presentation that he raised migration, which is an issue that interests me and to which I try to refer every time I get an opportunity. I regard migration as more important and pressing than Brexit because it has the capacity to break our Union and to bring it to its knees in a very short space of time if we do not take it on as a collective. That means less in the way of barbed wire and borders and more in the way of co-operation as we go forward. That is not to say that I am advocating an open door policy for anybody who wants to come. We have to manage what is happening.

We have to take the traffickers out of the equation. It is wrong in every sense of the word that traffickers can make money out of human misery.

When I went to Sicily we found that 93% of those who had landed could not reasonably have been classified as refugees and should more reasonably have been classified as economic migrants. Europe has to have a place for economic migrants. It has to have a place where we can upskill people from Third World countries and send them back home to improve their own economies. I am not advocating an attack on the human rights of people. I am advocating that as a Union we recognise our moral responsibilities. The current plan of having disembarkation stations on the north African coast is doomed before it starts. I am not sure how we will manage it but the middle of the Mediterranean is not the place. I have huge issues with where we are going on that.

Allied with the migration issue is the issue of what I would term as soft terrorism. From my observations in Italy, people arriving at a refugee or migrant station can declare they are anybody they want to be and can adopt an entirely new persona. They can leave their past and their history behind them. It is understandable that in some cases that will be the case. People depart at speed sometimes to save their own lives. We will have to find a better way of categorising people and establishing some sort of background on where they came from. It is a serious challenge for the Austrian Presidency of the European Union as we go forward. To a certain degree, the migration crisis has become slightly more controlled than it was but we still have a long way to go.

I would like to see policies developed or at least commenced under the Austrian Presidency so that we offer training, upskilling and repatriation and encourage the corporate world to invest in these countries. They are all prepared to invest. There are several examples in Ireland of footloose companies that pulled out, leaving 1,000 people unemployed in Ireland, and moved to places like China, Morocco and other places where they could get cheap labour. The polo shirt or pair of runners one buys on the high street is no cheaper as a result of these companies moving to cheaper labour sources. Clearly, there are supernormal profits being made by these companies. I note the ambassador's interest in taxation. I always love when foreign diplomats come here and have great interest in taxation just like we Irish do. Maybe we should be looking at the corporate world to get some of the taxation from it.

There are many other issues we will have an opportunity to discuss over the next six months but I wish the ambassador well. Leaving Brexit aside, which we always talk about in this room and I am sure Deputy Durkan has mentioned it many times, and although it is a huge issue, there are other problems that are much deeper and have the capacity to do far more damage. I wish the ambassador well and I look forward to the policies coming forward.

I am sorry again for being late.