Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome the fact we are having this debate today. It is incredibly important. It is very easy for us to hear snippets of information from the various sources about the extent of the migrant crisis and what it means for us in Ireland. However, at its most fundamental, it is not a migrant crisis or a refugee crisis but first and foremost a human crisis. The terms "migrant" and "refugee" have become weighted with connotations and have too often been used to almost distance ourselves from the humanity of the situation, namely, the desperation of men, women and children taking risk-laden journeys to try to escape the horrors of terror in order to survive. At its most fundamental, it is about survival. In our own DNA we understand that because we have a history, be it in the mid-19th century or otherwise. We are the survivors of that history, which is part of the reason we understand this issue more than most.

The conflict in Syria is the largest driver of migration. Anyone who has seen the recent aerial footage of the vibrant - or once vibrant - cities of Damascus and Homs will understand why a parent would make the decision to take their chances in very unseaworthy vessels just to make sure not just that their children have a future, but also that they and their children survive. Eritrea, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq all contribute to the numbers fleeing in search of peaceful lives. As Deputy Daly has pointed out, the problems regarding Afghanistan will increase the more ISIS becomes dominant. That is happening and it is something we should obviously be paying a great deal of attention to. People who have fled from that country simply cannot go back. We have signed up, as has the European Union, to international treaties relating to people who are fleeing for their lives but that is not the way it is playing out.

National Geographic is currently running an Instagram blog detailing the very human aspects of the crisis. There are images of women and children huddled into shipping containers talking eagerly about lands about which they really know nothing and just hoping that there will be some future for them, making plans and talking about, for example, whether their footwear will be good enough for this phenomenon that they have not experienced before, that is, snow. It is a very humbling project and is well worth paying attention to.

Anybody I know, anyone with an ounce of humanity, would have recoiled in horror when they saw the body of the little three-year-old, Alan Kurdi, washed up on the Turkish beach. However, we can see what is happening. It should not take one tragic incident for us to respond to this crisis. Regarding our own response, I applaud the Naval Service for its decision to send those vessels and for the 8,000 lives that were saved but it must go that stage further in assessing how those lives are lived afterwards. Those Naval Service people will pay a price in not being able to unsee what they have seen and there will be an emotional price for them too.

It is important not to fall victim to some of the lazy and internationally inflammatory narratives surrounding the crisis and the walls of mistrust that are constructed between "them" and "us". It is not long ago that Irish people were very much the "them". In some cases, it was a question of survival while in other cases, people were trying to make better lives for themselves. Our diaspora is now a source of pride and has contributed to other countries in a way that we are very proud of.

As for the notion that immigrants are always a drain on the country, people come to make a life and to improve themselves and it is very much a plus. We must extend the same humanity to others that was shown to our emigrants in the past decades. Of course, we must do that in a sustainable way, and that takes account of our ability and capacity to adequately support and assist those who we are seeking to help. I take Deputy Clare Daly's point about the initiative around children. That would be something we would show real leadership in providing. It is unacceptable for a 14 year old, a seven year old and a younger child to be in a location on their own. We can do something about such matters and take a lead on it.

It is not acceptable to say that we can take migrants and refugees if we do not have in place the services that allow us to treat them with respect. Direct provision is not acceptable to most of us. Nor is the chaotic waiting times for the application and processing of asylum claims. We must maintain our humanity in all aspects of our response to the crisis and not be sidelined by terms designed to dehumanise and alienate people.

If one is looking for failures of the European Union, this is one of the really big failures. It is a Europe of individual nations. We cannot stand back and be appalled listening to Donald Trump talking about building walls around the United States when we are seeing exactly that happening. Although it may not be a wall, and it might be a fence or it might be the use of tear gas, that is what is happening. If one is looking for the failure of the European Union, if one is looking for a Europe that has a social conscience, that is, a Europe of solidarity, Turkey is pointing to the failure. That is not the way to acknowledge human rights or the various treaties that Europe would have signed up to and I am ashamed when I look at that as a response. The big shame is that we, a small country like Ireland, have something more to say on this because of our own history.

The European Union is not only an economic union. It is, or is supposed to be, something more than an economic union and if this demonstrates anything, it demonstrates that it is not. Unless it is something more, it will be only about self-interest by individual nation states. Europe must act collectively in this regard but in the context of international human rights law.

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