Mr. Gary Daly:

That is no problem. The narrative of economic migrants as opposed to asylum seekers or refugees is, again, used to diminish people generally. I have been qualified for many years and it has taken me a long time to figure out exactly how to apply the difference. I can never accurately predict whether a client's claim will be successful and will be granted refugee status. There are three statuses, namely, refugee, subsidiary protection and permission to remain. It is very detailed and there is a great deal of case law up to the European Court of Human Rights, so predicting whether somebody will be declared a refugee is difficult. This is quite apart from the case of somebody who has had to travel from the likes of Syria, Afghanistan or somewhere else, through Türkiye or whatever, take all those risks, get onto a little dinghy and travel 6 km across to Lesbos, Chios or Samos and land there. I do not know whether anybody has seen the movie "The Swimmers" on Netflix but it is a really good depiction of that journey. I volunteered in the region years ago. To return to that narrative of economic migrants versus asylum seekers, someone may want to leave a place because of, for example, their sexuality. In more than 40 countries, at some level in their legislature, LGBT people are criminalised in some way. Many people leave their country because of their sexuality and it has nothing to do with war.

Other language being used by prominent politicians relates to smugglers and the idea we are not worried about refugees but are criminalising smugglers, who are bad people. I have met many smugglers. They are criminals and many of them are very bad people, but they would not be necessary if there were safe passage for people to travel to claim asylum or if people could claim asylum at the border where they are. I have visited Lebanon, Palestine and lots of places where people are stuck in camps for generations. If Ireland wanted to be more proactive and bring asylum seekers here, declare them refugees over there with the UNHCR and bring them here, that would be helpful.

As for economic migrants, Irish people have been emigrating for hundreds of years. Some members may have visited the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh, where there is a physical recreation of a coffin ship, which shows how small those ships were. There is the Jeanie Johnstonon the quays in Dublin as well. People should be aware of their own history. Economic migrants have been leaving Ireland for years and we have sent the eldest boy in the family because he is usually - this is no disrespect to my female comrades - seen to be the most robust and resilient. As for the narrative of "unvetted males", therefore, we have been sending unvetted males from Ireland for 100 years or more.