Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was agreed at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting that the European Union would make an effort to disrupt human trafficking on a massive scale, where organised crime is essentially feeding on people's misery and vulnerability. We have an obligation to disrupt that while, at the same time, we have an obligation to assist people who are fleeing persecution.

At the moment, Ireland's commitment is a much more straightforward and simple one. It is about search and rescue and emergency responses. That is a relatively straightforward task in comparison with the other, which is much more complicated. We cannot simply do nothing and allow organised and well resourced human traffickers to continue to move large numbers of people, piling them like cattle onto boats that are not fit to get more than 30 km out to sea. This is an issue on which the European Union should not sit idly by, and anything we do should have a UN mandate and international approval.

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