Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

Having listened to most of the speakers in this debate, the only conclusion I can make is that any law should be fair. Fairness should be determined by the way in which we ourselves would wish to be treated in a foreign country. This criterion should apply with regard to immigration laws. I hope this is the case although I am not certain. I am not so certain whether this Bill addresses the issues that appear to cause a problem or if it merely tries to tap into a certain antipathy in recent times and which seems to coincide with an economic downturn.

This society must recognise that it cannot change its mind on humanitarian issues just because times are tougher. This is the way we test ourselves. We must test our moral fibre as to whether we are capable of carrying out the same assessment fair and free, in respect of everybody, whether they are from this country or from some other jurisdiction, in all circumstances, notwithstanding the difficulties in which we find ourselves. I believe we can do this and many people are doing so.

I refer to the way the immigration system does not work satisfactorily. It is cumbersome. Some people have been in the country for ten, 12 and more years. Some people have been here since the mid-1990s and still do not have any status. They still have the same circuitous arrangements by which they go around in circles, come back for an extended residency for two or three years and ultimately the Minister, with his absolute discretion, has the right to make a decision. There are children who came to this country and who are now adults. They may have arrived aged two or three, in some cases as unaccompanied children. They have Irish accents, have lived most of their lives here and know no other life. There are being deported because of the failure to provide the necessary procedures to allow them to remain or to say that they do not comply with our immigration regulations and should not be here. We are doing damage to the prestige of our country. We are failing to recognise that people outside this island look at the way we do things. We are also failing to recognise that many Irish people are leaving this jurisdiction, as they did for hundreds of years, and travelling abroad. I hope the immigration laws in other countries treat Irish citizens in the way we would like them to be treated.

Let us consider other matters. The immigration system encourages people to be devious because immigrants know that if they answer questions in a certain way, they will receive a further query or an inconclusive answer. In an application for naturalisation, one of the most repeated mistakes by applicants who qualify for naturalisation is the answer to the question of whether they intend to remain in this jurisdiction after seeking naturalisation. It is a trick question that someone decided would be a good question. I have dealt with many cases where applicants answered "No" because they thought they were answering a different question. I cannot understand why people introduce questions of this nature but there must be some reason for it. When the application is decided we must start the process all over again, which costs taxpayers' money, and the person concerned qualifies in most cases.

What bugs me most of all is a practice that smacks of the cynicism about which I am worried. It concerns a person who has lived and worked here for six or seven years on foot of work permits. For reasons that are no one's fault, work permits are not always processed at the desirable speed. The result is that there are gaps in the work permits from the time one ceased to the time another was initiated. In the wisdom of those who make such decisions, when calculating the reckonable period for entitlement to naturalisation by reference to work permits, in some cases a number of days have been cited to refuse the application because of the alleged gaps in the system. I have no reason to disbelieve people when they and their employers tell me that this is a case of the same people working in the same jobs for more than five years, which is all they need in order to qualify for residency without a work permit. The amount of time and energy it takes to go through the repetitive system suggests it is not there for people's benefit.

Reference was made to the number of judicial reviews. I understand and sympathise with why judicial reviews take place. I was dealing with a case last week where the person concerned had spent a long time in this jurisdiction, having been on an extended period of residency and then remaining illegally because of a failure to renew stamp 4 or stamp 3. I became suspicious and I asked for further papers to see the background to the case. My suspicions were correct because the application for refugee or asylum status was dealt with by an individual who had never been known to grant asylum or refugee status to any of the 1,500 or 1,600 applicants involved. In a perfect society, there are perfect people but I fail to understand how in any job anyone could have 1,500 or 1,600 applicants and none of them qualified for anything. Eventually, the case was referred to the courts and that person no longer carries out that function.

I would be equally suspicious if all 1,500 or 1,600 applicants had been granted asylum status. I would also find that difficult to understand. If we do unconscionable things, people become suspicious and they start to treat Irish people outside this jurisdiction in a similar fashion. I do not want to see that happen, nor does anyone in this House. It is very easy to go along with the crowd or tap into antipathy and have the wind at our backs. The problem is that the wind will not always be at the backs of our people all the time. We must also think of those situations.

Another problem is references in hearings. I am certain there are many cases where a quick determination could be made on whether a person had valid reasons to remain in the country or to seek asylum. Seeking residency in the country on foot of a work permit is a different story. People from this country and all over the world have always had a right to seek employment and to move around for economic reasons. It is up to the nation to which they travel to have statutory provisions to ensure that it can refuse if the country does not want people but if it does want people we cannot be two-faced about it. We must be honest. I remind Members on the Government benches that a senior Minister told this House five or six years ago that we needed at least 500,000 people in this country to supplement the workforce. We cannot be hypocritical and tell people we want and love them in Ireland and want them to help us and then when the job market goes bad tell them that we no longer want them.

Many of the people who came to this country worked solidly. In some cases they were employed for reasons of compassion by employers who recognised they were not legally entitled to remain here but gave them employment for humanitarian reasons and felt they were doing the employees a favour. As it happens, that was not the case. We need to be careful when we become arbitrary and condemnatory. When we hear the folklore of atrocities and sponging and all the money everyone gets except us, we need to check beyond the urban myths. There is always a little bit more involved. Very few people want to go that route. More than ever, we need to have the moral courage that many people have. Such people always recognise fair play and want the nation to be seen to carry out its laws under the general regime of fair play. That will always remain.

Why were people barred from seeking employment and working? I can never understand that because there was no reason to do so. While seeking asylum or residency, there is no reason people could not be allowed to work on a temporary basis for six months or one year. A permit could be renewed on an annual basis. There could also have been a special category created. We are bound to observe our laws, international laws, human rights laws and UN conventions. We are bound to do that. We cannot devise the rules to suit particular situations.

Women, young girls and children are particularly vulnerable in the kind of situation developing currently. In one case I examined it appeared on the face of it that the person concerned did not have a valid reason for wishing to remain in this country because the person had refugee status in another country. However, on closer examination it transpired that other countries within the European Union have problems as the unfortunate person in question had to leave another European Union member state because that person had been forced into prostitution. I have no doubt that because of the method of dealing with their cases several young women, and boys for that matter, have been forced into prostitution because they have no money. They have no money to start with and once they are confined to the waste sector nobody looks after them. Let us not forget about all the foreign national children who went missing in care in the past six to seven years. Nobody cares about them. Our caring society needs to examine itself from time to time and not just stand on the sideline and presume this does not affect any of us.

In all of the cases I have followed and in the hearings that have taken place, both the initial hearings and the appeal hearings, the phrase that one hears again and again is "the applicant claims" and "it is claimed". The word "claim" indicates disbelief. If the person making the decision disbelieves the person making the claim or the application in any country in the world we well know what that means. I expect the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Power, would agree with me. The belief is that if one makes a claim, what one is saying is untrue. I object to that. We are quite entitled to say that a person does not qualify or that the application is not in accordance with the rules or the law but we are not entitled to say we disbelieve whatever the applicant says. That is a different story. I reject the use of the word "claim" in that context. We must treat people in the way we would like to be treated ourselves, with no exceptions. We may wish to change the law for dealing with other nationalities, as Irish citizens make applications to other nations, but we must all expect the same treatment.

A visit to the immigration centres is an interesting experience, especially if one visits them often. As Irish people we have probably more experience as emigrants than people in most other countries. It is demeaning, sad and poignant to see people waiting to be called and not knowing what the outcome will be. It is not easy for them. Everyone in this House has relatives who sat in immigration centres in Staten Island, Sydney and elsewhere. It is not easy. It is not sufficient to say we were treated in that way as well and it was not fair. That we were ever treated unfairly anywhere does not justify a continuation of that unfair treatment anywhere.

I hope the Bill will bring about an improvement in this area. That remains to be seen. I hope in future to see fewer references to "claims" by applicants. It could be replaced by references to "statements", which is what is acceptable everywhere else. We have the right to disbelieve, reject or prove wrong applications but not to come to a conclusion on some vague premise that we have known about such a similar case in the way that one hears of a person who has not committed a particular crime but he could have committed another one. That approach is not acceptable, as the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Power, well knows.

I do not have time to deal with trafficking but, as Deputy Creighton indicated, it is appalling. We have all dealt with serious cases. Trafficking affects young women in particular, some of whom have come from regimes that are less than conscious of international law on human rights and who, by virtue of their very disposition, are vulnerable and resign themselves to being used because they have known nothing else. We have a duty to try to give them a clear understanding that everything is not rotten in the world, that there are people who consider their situation. I hope Irish people abroad who may be vulnerable get fairly treated by a system that is conscious of their situations and willing and caring in the way we would like.

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