Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As we speak, a commemoration march from Strokestown to the east coast is taking place. It commemorates the 1,490 people who walked the route during the Famine and boarded coffin ships for Canada, upon which more than 700 of them died. A point made yesterday was that this replicates what is happening in the Middle East. This is simply appalling in the sense of humanity. The fact that it is on the Mediterranean exacerbates the situation, because people's lives are lost through drowning.

Some 1 million people have left Syria and moved to south Lebanon or Jordan, but there is no humanitarian plan to deal with that scale of migration. There are countries without boundaries in Africa, where people move from Somalia through Libya to the coast to get to Europe. The scale of this is unprecedented in terms of numbers. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Flanagan, representing the Government, and the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Fitzgerald, attended the meeting in Luxembourg yesterday. There was agreement from the European Ministers for foreign affairs and security and justice on the ten-point plan. President Tusk has called a meeting of the European Council on Thursday to deal with this.

Deputy Adams's question is perfectly valid. It depends upon the scale of investment in search and rescue operations and humanitarian relief. The second part of that concerns what it is possible to do in vast areas that are on a knife edge and where all kinds of cruelty against humanity are practised. These people, desperate in their destitution, are arriving at the shores of the Mediterranean, are put, in some cases, put on ships without captain, steward or compass, and are doomed before they ever sail. This is an appalling disgrace. It will not be sorted out at the European Council meeting on Thursday, but Italy and Malta are to be commended for what they did. Italy had the Mare Nostrum project in place and now needs assistance in terms of surveillance, interception, rescue and humanitarian relief.

There is a deeper and much more challenging problem in the vast countries where large numbers of people are being treated savagely by warring factions, a problem that is not confined to Libya alone. Ireland will make its case on Thursday and will continue to offer humanitarian assistance. A figure of 5,000 refugees has been mentioned, and Ireland will play its part as it has always done. In many years gone by, people from this country went wherever they might be welcome, which is one of the reasons we have such an extensive diaspora of descendants.

This is an immediate problem. Children, babies and helpless people are being loaded onto boats at this moment in time by unscrupulous racketeers who know that the complete inadequacy of the vessels they are putting them on dooms them to the probability of drowning in the Mediterranean when all they want is to flee from persecution, savagery and death and look beyond the immediate shores to a place where they might have hope and a new life. The challenge is of an unprecedented scale for all countries in Europe. For our part, in terms of the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Justice and Equality and Defence, we will contribute in whatever way we can to dealing with this issue.

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