Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In an earlier stage of my life I worked in a region of Africa which was heavily affected by not just hundreds of thousands but millions of refugees. While I appreciate the sentiments of a lot of Members of this House, we need to be honest and realistic about what Ireland can and should do. I subsequently served for almost five years as Minister of State with responsibility for overseas development aid, in which capacity I had the important, if heart-rending, task of visiting very large refugee camps as a result of the genocide in Rwanda where the violence did not require bullets. Machetes were used to kill people, in many cases those who lived next door, and millions left by walking away.

By and large, refugees want to travel to the nearest country in order that they can return home when the conflict is over. If we were to be unfortunate enough to have violence in this country again that required people to flee, we know from experience that they would not want to leave their own homes but would want to make a life for themselves and their children in their own country. If they had to flee because of war and violence, they would generally want to return home and would only want to travel another country or continent if that was the only way to put a life together. We need to be honest about this. Some people migrate for economic reasons in search of a better life and that issue has to be addressed in a globalised world, but the only way to deal with a refugee crisis is to make peace and allow people the freedom to live in their homeland free from persecution.

The previous two speakers asked why so few Syrians were interested in coming to Ireland. The answer is simple. They would like to go to their friends, relatives and communities which are, for the most part, in Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries. That is what refugees do. Why did Irish people not travel to Germany after the Great Famine? They went to America because they had kith and kin there. They were more economic migrants, but in modern-day parlance they would be called refugees.

The European Union is based on solidarity and the founding impulse was to break the cycle of wars that had disfigured life in Europe for centuries. It remains one of the European Union's greatest strengths, but it does not do speed or rapid reaction, although there may be organisations with such designations attached to their titles. That must be a factor in any honest discussion. The only ones who can deal with the refugee numbers on the current scale are personnel with a background or who have received training in military organisations or organisations such as the fire service and medical and nursing personnel who are used to dealing with such crises and trained to respond to particular situations as they arise in a considered and comprehensive way.

The focus of EU foreign policy has to be on making peace in Syria and achieving a lasting peace in the region. Only then will there be space to stop the conflict and allow the families who have stayed to rebuild their lives and the ones who have left to rebuild theirs in bordering countries to return. There has to be a focus on women and children because they are the major casualties. In a lot of cases men are killed in conflicts and women and children make up the bulk of the people who flee. There is a need for responses from the European Union and other international organisations to allow children to continue their educational development in societies which value educational development highly.

If all of that was taken from us, simply because conflict had broken out and it was not possible to use the schools, how would we respond? Consider how difficult it was for people in different parts of rural Ireland at the height of the flooding crisis when they were deprived of the freedom to operate in the way they normally and traditionally would.

I agree that the response at present is slow. The agreement with Turkey does not bode well for the future, but we will see. The best thing happening at present is a deeper, better and more realistic conversation about how to help people. It is important that we in Ireland and in this Chamber collectively indicate that we support people being accepted into Ireland, but it is foolish to think that if people have relatives in Germany they will not wish to go to those relatives. However, where people are willing to consider other countries we should be to the forefront in offering refuge to families who may be willing to come here.

We must then consider how they will do when they get here. Above all else, they will have to stay here if they have no home to go to. My constituency of Dublin West received approximately 500 Bosnian families during the Bosnian conflict and many more through family reunification. How do people get on well if they have had to move to another country? It is by learning the language and by getting opportunities in education and ultimately in work, so they can develop a new family life. Unfortunately, for many of them it is in a new country, but perhaps they can be successful. When the conflict has ended either they or some of the children of the family as they grow to adulthood might be able to return home, if that is feasible.

We must be intensely practical about all of this, but we must also recognise that Ireland has a number of outstanding agencies, including the Navy, the Army and the Garda, whose personnel have served in many difficult conflict locations and on their borders. There are also organisations such as Trócaire, Concern and GOAL, which have unrivalled experience of dealing with humanitarian situations under the greatest pressures and of bringing genuine relief, as opposed to just words, to people who are in the most appalling situations. The International Organisation for Migration and the other UN organisations are incredibly well-meaning but, by God, they are very slow to respond. The Irish efforts must fit into that framework.

The genuine feeling of people in Ireland in favour of being able to help people who are under the most appalling pressure and stress is probably our greatest strength as a country. We should then look to the proud and real record of work of people at different levels of organisations such as Concern. One has to go into a conflict situation to see what those organisations and individual Irish people are able to do. We should be proud of that. Do not be stingy about the Irish effort. We are spending approximately €600 million per year on aid and development. That is a significant amount of money that is properly used, and it helps. However, speed and a real rapid response is what we wish to see.

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