Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is agreement on ensuring that we can get medical supplies, food and supports into Yemen. The EU has spent a significant amount of money supporting aid efforts to try to do that. It is inexcusable knowingly to allow children, or anyone for that matter, to starve and to cut off supply routes for humanitarian assistance. However, this is complicated. It pertains to access to some ports where there are serious security issues and ongoing conflict. That is why we are so committed to supporting efforts for a political solution and the maintenance of a ceasefire so that we can access many of very vulnerable communities. The only show in town has been the implementation of the Stockholm Agreement. We want to continue to support efforts in that regard.

Regarding the Mediterranean, Ireland was not involved in a meeting that took place in Malta on 23 September, which was organised by the Maltese Government and attended by Maltese, French, German and Italian interior ministers as well as the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship and the Finnish EU Presidency. We were absent because we were in New York. Otherwise I probably would have been there. However, we welcome such efforts to find a consensus among member states on the disembarkation and relocation of migrants arriving in the EU. Ireland has consistently called for all EU states to play their part in burden sharing and for more sustainable solutions to be found to these issues.

Just in case anybody does not know how this works at the moment, I will outline the situation in recent months, though things are starting to change now. If a ship, whether state-owned or, more commonly, NGO-owned, had migrants on board and was able to access a port in Malta, Italy or somewhere else, there would be a phone call around different member states to see whether they would take some of those refugees voluntarily. That is normally the condition of allowing that ship to disembark. That is totally understandable. Consider a minister in Malta, a small island where potentially thousands of migrants might disembark. Unless such an official knows his or her government can manage and other member states will help share that burden, it is very difficult to allow a ship in, both politically and in pragmatic terms. The previous Italian Government took a very hard line on this issue. The humanitarian element of Operation Sophia effectively collapsed because of the inability to disembark. That is why the remit changed.

On this issue I have been very critical of the EU and of the inability to get an agreement between all member states on burden sharing, even if that burden sharing meant that some states contribute to financing solutions and others are willing to take migrants. If that kind of pragmatism is needed to get a deal, then we need to consider it. We are certainly supportive of the efforts of France, Germany and others to arrive at a solidarity-based approach, which will make it a lot easier for a new Italian government, a Maltese government or other Mediterranean countries such as Spain, France, Greece etc. to make the political decisions around disembarkation. That is our view. We are and have been very interested in this issue. Obviously that is because we have a moral obligation to be so, but it is also because Irish Naval Service ships have taken about 14,000 people out of the sea in the Mediterranean. That is a lot of people. Many of them were children. We have seen some tragedy this year, but we cannot base a policy on knowingly allowing people to drown in the Mediterranean when we have the capacity to rescue them.

There are other issues we need to factor in. We need to make sure we are not creating a pull factor. I know that sounds crude, but there were legitimate concerns that there were communications between people in Libya who were sending people to sea and people who were waiting to receive them. We need to make sure we are not contributing to the problem. At the same time, we need to ensure a real search and rescue capacity so that we do not knowingly allow the tragedy of which we have seen too much. That is our view.

I hope the efforts taking place at present, led by France, Germany and others, can deliver a more structured and streamlined system that can allow disembarkation to happen in a more managed and controlled way, as opposed to crisis by crisis calls to try to get countries to take migrants voluntarily so disembarkation can occur. As it happens, Ireland has quietly and voluntarily taken a number of migrants in those circumstances, usually five, ten or 15, to try to make a contribution to a collective effort to deal with some very difficult issues.