Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I was involved in the painstaking passage of the previous Bill through this House, when we got as far as Report Stage. We raised a number of issues at the time and a fair percentage of those are acknowledged in the Bill before the House today. Some areas need to be strengthened in relation to it, however. Ultimately, we all want to see a streamlined immigration system in place, and I hope the parliamentary process is expedited and that the Minister facilitates the quick passage of the Bill through the House, so that the legislation may be implemented once and for all. This is the third published Bill in this area, and we have yet to see the enactment of the legislation. It is crucially important that it be enacted as soon as possible.

Over the last 15 years, Ireland has undergone a dramatic transformation. The Celtic tiger brought in its wake a large migrant workforce and unprecedented numbers coming to Ireland meant our immigration system was continuously playing catch-up. The system is still struggling with delays and judicial reviews and the lack of accountability is commonplace.

The challenge of integration is also significant. At an annual cost of €300 million a year, or €3 billion over the last decade, the system, as it stands, is nothing short of a mess. With the numbers entering Ireland in decline and the need for efficiencies evident, there is no better time for reform of the immigration system.

However, Ireland needs an immigration system in which citizens and other residents can have confidence. We must establish a system of immigration that is fair, transparent and tough on fraud, and addresses Ireland's economic needs and circumstances in a manner that is respectful of the rights of immigrants. Our borders and public services have always been open to exploitation, allowing criminals into the country while genuine applicants wait for years within the immigration system. The downturn has exposed the level of abuse and waste within the public service and the lack of a co-ordinated response by the Government. Foreign fraudsters have a role in abusing our social welfare system, but it must be acknowledged that they are a small cog in a big wheel of domestic fraud. However, abuses of any Government system cannot be tolerated.

The Government has brought the same level of competence and skill to the management of immigration that it brought to the management of our economy. It has created a system that ill serves the needs of our country and fails to respect the rights of immigrants. Immigration can be of real benefit to Ireland, but only if it is properly managed. We need to manage migration flows through a co-ordinated approach at both EU and national level that ensures we have an immigration and integration system that serves the interests of Ireland, our economy and those who reside here, regardless of their nationality.

At present, Ireland has no clear immigration policy. Things are done in a piecemeal manner and, as a result, confidence in the effectiveness of our immigration system has been severely damaged. People are not confident that anyone is actually in charge. Reform is required in the residency, citizenship and asylum system, but only residency and asylum are dealt with in this Bill. The immigration system is so obscure and chaotic that a simple application for long-term residency or citizenship can take two years to process. The delays in applications for long-term residency are leading to a situation in which people are now applying for citizenship instead. This allows them to avoid the bureaucracy and red tape associated with long-term residency and undermines the status of Irish citizenship, as it is being used as a mechanism to circumvent the immigration system. That in itself highlights the need to expedite this legislation.

The current system has completely undermined the status of citizenship in this country. With the introduction of this legislation, long-term residency now at least has a statutory structure, as it sets a number of criteria in this regard. However, it sets the bar higher for residency than it does for citizenship. Although citizenship is in the gift of State, and its granting is at the discretion of the Minister, the fact that we will have set out in statute exactly what criteria are required for residency without any statutory provision for citizenship undermines the status of Irish citizenship and makes the whole thing farcical. In tandem with the passage of the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill, it is now of the utmost importance that we expedite urgent reform of our citizenship laws to ensure that the status of Irish citizenship is put on a pedestal, where it should be, and that people work to achieve citizenship.

We must set out stepping stones for people who come to this country to achieve citizenship, as there are currently none. There are stepping stones for long-term residency in this Bill, but there are none for citizenship. This highlights the weakness of the statutory provisions regarding citizenship. Urgent review of that legislation is now required.

Under the asylum process - or, as it will be called, the protection process - it takes up to seven years at present to process an application to finality, and people are dumped into accommodation that is totally inappropriate for long-term living, which is a scandal. The whole idea of the direct provision system was to provide for applicants' short-term requirements; I do not have a difficulty with the direct provision system for short-term accommodation. The new immigration Bill will, I hope, ensure that protection applicants stay in the direct provision system for only a short period. That is the objective behind it, and we all support that. However, what are we to do with the people who are already in the system? As was said by speakers earlier, 2,600 protection applicants entered the system in 2009, and approximately 12,000 people have already gone through the asylum system, were deemed by the Department to be failed asylum seekers and have applied for leave to remain in this country. At present, the Department is processing approximately 2,000 applications per annum. Based on those figures, it will take six years to process those applications to finality. This Bill does absolutely nothing to address the backlog. The cohort of people who have come into the system up to now are not being dealt with under the provisions of the legislation that is before us today.

I have persistently raised this issue with the Minister, but he brushed it aside and said it would all be dealt with in the new immigration Bill, which would expedite the process. I hope it will do that, but it will not deal with the 2,600 people who applied for asylum last year. It would have been able to deal with them if it had been passed in the Houses in an expeditious manner and given priority within the parliamentary system. As it was not given priority, those applicants, along with the ones who come into the system this year, will be dealt with under the current archaic system, which takes up to seven years to process an application to finality.

I remember saying to the Minister on the floor of the House that we needed to do something about the problem of judicial reviews. The legislation before us today will deal with new judicial reviews, but it does not apply to people who are already in the system. There are approximately 600 to 700 people within the judicial review system at present, and it is costing the Irish taxpayer €800 per asylum application per week. I suggested to the Minister approximately 12 months ago that we should ask the High Court judges to sit for the month of September to deal with these judicial reviews. If half of the High Court judges agreed to sit for the month of September, assuming that each application takes approximately one day, about 300 cases would be cleared. The Minister ridiculed me, said it could not be done, and would not contact the President of the High Court. I acknowledge that the President of the High Court, on his own initiative, has decided to try to deal with the backlog. However, it is pity we did not have a bit of initiative from the Minister in this regard. It would have helped to deal with the frustration among taxpayers that they have footed a bill of €300 million over the last decade for a system that clearly does not work and will not be addressed by this Bill. As other speakers have noted, we should be reviewing their applications and making decisions on them. If they are granted asylum, give them refugee status in this country but, if not, tell them it is time to go home. At present they are being fobbed off and their cases are dragged out for months and years. What these people want is a final decision from the Department so they can get on with their lives, whether in Ireland or back in their own countries.

I hope the issue of deportation will be addressed on Committee Stage. The cost of deportation is significant. We paid more than €100,000 to send one individual to west Africa. Another individual was so disruptive that he had to be taken off an aircraft at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris. The cost of sending that individual home will be significant. I argued on Committee Stage of the 2008 Bill that an incentive should be built into the legislation for people to voluntarily leave this jurisdiction. We need to bear in mind the interest of the Irish taxpayer as we debate the present Bill. We could offer a window of opportunity to individuals who are issued with a notice of intention to deport by allowing them to voluntarily leave the country while retaining the possibility of applying to return to the jurisdiction in a few years time. At the end of the day, they are allowed back at the discretion of the Minister and I have no difficulty with this. Surely, however, the door should not be slammed shut in their faces if they do not put the additional burden on the taxpayer of forcibly deporting them. We could provide an incentive to people to return home through the International Organisation for Migration instead of deporting them. We need to take a new attitude in this legislation in terms of protecting the interests of the taxpayer.

Immigration policy needs to focus on creating jobs rather than taking them. Over the past decade, people came to this country to take up low skilled jobs, many of which have now evaporated. We need to review how we structure immigration policy.

An issue which I have raised in the past is the treatment of migrant entrepreneurs, that is, people who come to this country from outside of the European Union with good business ideas. Perhaps they can only create employment for themselves when they initially set up their businesses in this country but they have potential for creating jobs for Irish citizens down the road. As the law stands, however, they must show they can make a capital investment of €300,000 and commit to employing a minimum of two EU nationals. That is a false barrier to job creation. No Irish citizen would be able to establish a business under those criteria. This is why 85% of the applications presented to the Department of Justice and Law Reform were refused. We need to review the legislation in this area because a decision to grant permission to establish a business in this country should be based on the concept and the person's ability rather than artificial criteria dating from a completely different era.

A number of contributors, including the Minister, spoke about foreign students and the potential they offer for additional revenue. Unfortunately, we have closed off much of that revenue. Over the past two years, the number of foreign students coming to Ireland for language education has decreased by one quarter at a cost to the State of €20 million. Fine Gael has set out an international education plan that could create 6,000 jobs and generate an income of €900 million. There is great potential for developing the language market in this country. We are currently attracting approximately 1% of the global education market. Given the strong reputation this country enjoys for education, particularly in the area of English language education, there is great potential for investment. It is estimated that each international student studying abroad spends up to €26,000 per annum and up to 15 local jobs are created for every 100 students coming into this country.

Reference was made to immigrants' use of the student visa system to get part-time jobs. There is no doubt that the existing system needs to be reviewed in order to close off loopholes but the market could be expanded massively by introducing a completely new student visa regime which could fast-track visas for students from key markets with a low risk of abuse. We should think about providing green cards automatically to PhD graduates in sectors which are experiencing skill shortages. Amazingly, certain sectors of the economy, including sciences, engineering and technology, continue to suffer a shortage of skills. If we are going to capitalise on the smart economy, we need to attract these key people.

Immigration is about choice but we cannot make choices unless we have secure borders, clear policies and proper structures. We must manage migration flows through a co-ordinated approach at both EU and national levels. Our immigration policy has to serve the interest of our economy and those who reside here, regardless of their nationality.

See this speech in context