John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)

When I explained that fewer than 10% of asylum seekers were refugees, I was excoriated. The whispered and unspoken charge among many of my critics was the basest allegation of all — that the policies which I was pursuing were racist. It mattered little that nothing could have been further from the truth but the truth had become the enemy. Let it not become the enemy again.

In a fog of confusion the Opposition called for simplistic solutions and argued for an open door policy to give a general right of work to asylum seekers, and for an amnesty for asylum seekers irrespective of the validity of their claims. They argued against fingerprinting of asylum seekers; that employers of illegal immigrants should go unpunished; for a cessation of deportations; against measures to combat marriages of convenience which secured citizenship; against expediting judicial reviews even in manifestly unfounded cases; that economic disadvantage, of itself, should provide an automatic and unfettered right of passage across national boundaries; and for policy positions which were not followed by any other international state.

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