Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I am delighted to speak on this important Bill. I am not certain whether the Bill addresses in full the issues arising at present but it attempts to deal with some of them. Perhaps it does not do so in the same manner I would have but this is in the nature of things and doctors differ.

We should be more familiar with emigration than any other nation on earth. For a long time, we have wandered the face of the earth and gone to every country, location and jurisdiction. My generation is the first of my family since the 1840s in which no one had to emigrate out of necessity. At present, emigration is the only answer for people in many other countries.

I was amused when the previous Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform used to state he did not believe some of the stories coming from refugees and asylum seekers. He stated they did not always tell the truth. I used to marvel at this. After all, anybody practising in the courts will have questioned much of what they have been told. He seemed to be amazed at the suggestion that somebody would lengthen or improve a story. I would have thought this to be the normal procedure. We know somebody making a case will try to make the best possible case and embellish it. The story might not always be exactly as it happened. One cannot blame people for improving their story to make it more convincing.

However, I have reservations about matters which have occurred. It is well known that a particular individual who adjudicates applications for asylum and refugee status has never once granted asylum. I cannot understand how not one application out of 10,000 or 11,000 considered over a number of years was granted. How could those allocating the cases be so selective as to ensure that prior to being examined, this adjudicator received all of the cases which did not qualify? This makes me suspicious and the system must be examined. This Bill proposes changes and after it is passed the Minister and officials must recognise these matters must be addressed as a matter of urgency. The fact that something is happening which may be seen to be clever and about which people have a quiet nod and a wink and a snigger does not mean it should continue under any circumstances.

Another matter which has come to my attention is the hardship caused to young children whose parents have been here for a number of years. They have gone through the primary and second level education system and are now ready to enter third level education and want to do so. They do not qualify for a higher education grant and can only continue in education if they have €5,000 or €10,000 to spend. It is extremely sad to see these teenagers making their pleas and speaking in Dublin, Kildare, Sligo and Roscommon accents. They have been here since they were five or seven years of age. These cases must be addressed. The Minister mentioned the possibility of an amnesty. This is where the amnesty should kick in and deal with these cases as a matter of course in accordance with fair play.

Other speakers mentioned criminals entering the country. We all know we do not need criminals as we have enough of them here already. Our home-grown criminals do very well throughout the world, as I mentioned several times on the Order of Business. They are doing so well they are recognised internationally as a growing force in the criminal world. We must have a simple means of sifting applicants at an early stage so as not to penalise all applicants for asylum and economic immigrants. This would eliminate many snags and back logs and the long drawn-out process we have.

I doubt I am unique in that 99% of the people who come to me for advice have one thing in common. They want to work. They want to be independent and will do whatever work is available, whether it is driving a bus or a digger or nursing. It is eternally frustrating not to have status to work for those whose cases have been pending for up to ten years and who have brought up their children here.

I hear mention of people who are here illegally, and some did come here illegally. However, others became illegal by virtue of changing their address. Some cases could have done with another hearing and a sympathetic ear. From all the questions I have asked these individuals, their motives do not appear to be in any way more sinister than simply avoiding having to go back to from where they came.

Like every Member, various immigration cases have come to my attention. Various evidence has been submitted and forms filled out with a decision taken by the relevant officer, argued in tabular form. The case made in some of these arguments on paper is highly suspicious, leading to only one conclusion. If an officer disbelieves everything put before him or her and has an intimate knowledge of the conditions prevailing in the applicant's homeland, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform should refer to the Department of Foreign Affairs. There one gets a different story and that matters in the homeland are very different from those proclaimed in the adjudication of the asylum-seeker's status.

The Department of Foreign Affairs adjudicates on what it sees internationally and theirs is a fair assessment. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform looks at it in a different form. I am not saying this to open the floodgates and allow everyone who wants to enter the country. It must be done at European level, with the one regime across the EU. It needs to be regularised in some fashion. It cannot, like a tap, be turned on and off, simply because some people are going to be discriminated against.

There is the matter of first landfall covered by the Dublin Convention. For example, an individual fleeing from the Democratic Republic of Congo is turned back from Belgium. If that individual turns up in Ireland, under the Dublin Convention, he or she is returned to the place from whence they were first deported, in this case Belgium.

I had a case of a woman who had been seriously abused in her homeland. She managed to flee to France but was deported from there. Eventually she came to Ireland but was deported by virtue of the fact the original deportation was in order. Close questioning of the woman revealed a horrific list of abuse and hardship. I raised her case with the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell, and asked what was likely to happen to this woman if she were deported. Was her welfare and well-being taken into account? Was she to be sent back to a safe haven in her country? When I followed it up, she was not, ending up on the streets with no protection from any quarter.

Care must be given to the replies given to parliamentary questions because the veracity of those replies could have serious implications for the individuals who are the subject matter. In those circumstances, there is an urgent need to appraise each situation accurately and fairly from everyone's point of view. I accept changes have been made on humanitarian grounds where reviews can take place, albeit they can take a long time. There must always be a mechanism whereby the individual's particular circumstances, precarious as they may well be, should be taken into account in such a way as to protect that person's life if they have to.

One question I pursued with the Minister's predecessor was to ascertain in the cases of deportation, whether the well-being of the deportee was safeguarded. I never got an answer to that particular question because it was not in the then culture of the thinking to give one.

I am not being critical of individual officers but it is a simple fact of life that if we want to be treated fairly in the world, then we must be fair to those who come here for whatever reason. It is not a crime to come to Ireland for economic reasons. The previous Minister used to marvel at the notion that people would come to Ireland for economic reasons. "They are economic immigrants", he proclaimed, aghast at the very thought. There is nothing wrong with that. It has always been the case that people move around seeking employment. It is not a crime.

Regarding the language provisions in the Bill, English can be difficult for immigrants if it is not their first language. Incidentally, many immigrants have learned the Irish language successfully. For example, take the local authority housing application form. Once it used to be a simple two-page document. In the 1980s, the Revenue Commissioners used to have a 25-page document, form 12, that everyone castigated. Eventually, it was reduced to a two-page document and still served its purpose. Never to be outdone, what did the local authorities come up with for the housing application form? They turned a two-page document into a 27-page one. Many questions are asked several times such as "What is your first language?", "Where do your parents come from?", "How many times have you moved house in the past five years?", "What was your address in the previous five years and the previous five years to that?". I never read so much raiméis in all my life.

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