Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister agree with the words of President Michael D. Higgins that the failure at EU level has turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard? Given that the Minister said he did not agree with the downscaling of the Mare Nostrum operation, are we to take it that, at EU level, the Irish Government is arguing for search and rescue operations to be restored to that level rather than what has currently been embarked upon?

What is the Minister's attitude to the suspension of the Dublin Convention whereby people arriving in an EU country have to be processed for asylum in that country, which is causing major problems for Italy and Greece? Has he advanced the discussions about taking extra refugees? I do not know if the Minister saw the excellent letter by Ed Horgan, the famous peace activist in Limerick and former Irish officer, who made the point that on 11 April 2015 some 300 asylum seekers drowned in the Mediterranean. On the very same day the EU launched a spacecraft into space and recovered that piece of hardware from the ocean at a cost of €150 million. Is it not obscene that we would spend €150 million rescuing a piece of hardware and yet downgrade a rescue operation, putting the lives of hundreds of people at risk when we have been complicit in making them refugees in the first place?

The Minister said we had to look at it but that there was no immediate solution. We know that, but non-intervention would be a very good start. We could stop the flood of refugees by stopping the interference in their countries in the first place.

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