Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

More than 8,000 people have been moved from the Idomeni camp, and among them are hundreds of unaccompanied children. If the European Union countries, including Ireland, had fulfilled their obligations in the past year, most of those people would not be going into another camp but would be facing a better future. Sadly, the programme of the EU is about detention and deportation, when it should be about solidarity and service provision.

Last summer, EU member states promised to relocate 160,000 people from Greece and Italy.

Just over 6,200 of those 160,000 people have been relocated. The European Union's failure to address the refugee problem in a positive way beggars belief. There is a statistic from the International Organization for Migration indicating that ten people per day have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014. That means for every 23 people relocated in Europe, ten are dying at sea. That does not even include those who died on the mainland, suffocating in the back of trucks or getting crushed to death trying to get a lift on or under a truck in Calais or Dunkirk.

It beggars belief how human beings can treat other human beings. These people did not choose to be refugees and they did not want to leave their homes, which were bombed. Much of this started with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003; we facilitated that by allowing the Americans to use Shannon Airport. We facilitated it at EU level by supporting the policy of the Americans, French and British military endeavours. We are not innocent. How much of an objection did we raise to the EU deal with Greece and Turkey? It was probably very small. That deal is a nonsense. Kurds are being forced back to Turkey from Greece and Turks will shoot them on site. Turkey is not a safe place for refugees and we should challenge that deal.

Sadly, we need to seriously rethink our lack of a neutral stance in how the world operates. We have no problem shaking hands with presidents, kings and other leaders who kill thousands of people but who have no problem smiling for the cameras. We have no problem doing business with such people. We can pretend that we care about refugees but we have helped to bomb them out of their homes. Is it possible we can do a little more? Could we show that we really care about them? A couple of weeks ago I pleaded with the Minister to send a team to Calais and Dunkirk to assess unaccompanied minors. Deputy Clare Daly and I met representatives of the Red Cross last week and it is assessing 950 homes of people who have offered to take in refugees. It is a no-brainer and it would be a positive step to take. We might say we will only take people outside Europe or Syria but it does not matter who they are. They could be Syrians, Kurds, Iraqis, Sudanese or Yemeni. We need to help these people. The Irish have gone all over the planet and we got help everywhere but now we do not want to help these people. Europe may want to pretend everything is going to be okay and the problem will go away, but it will not go away. More refugees will come this year than came last year, and more people are drowning in the Mediterranean in 2016 than did in 2015.

There are many complications involved in bringing people to this country and I am not saying this is black and white. We are not making a good effort but we could. That would make such a difference. It would bring a bit of credibility to us as a nation if we played a much stronger role. Ireland and European countries in general are not playing a strong role right now.

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