Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I also wish to raise what I believe to be the utterly shameful approach of the European Union when it comes to dealing with migrants attempting to get into the European Union. Since the year 2000, some 22,000 people have died while attempting to get into Europe and that number has escalated dramatically. The blood of those innocent people is on the hands of European Union and every single leader, including the Taoiseach, in so far as they have co-operated in developing the policy of fortress Europe, the most shameful example of which is the EU-Turkey agreement. To be absolutely clear about this agreement, the European Convention on Human Rights states that "Collective expulsion of aliens is prohibited". There is no equivocation; it is prohibited but the Taoiseach and other European leaders have signed an agreement that states that "All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands as of 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey". Ireland has signed an agreement that commits explicitly to the collective expulsion of aliens, which is counter to the European Convention on Human Rights. Consequently, we are engaging in what is, in human rights terms, illegal action that from a moral point of view is shameful and murderous. There simply is no other way to describe it and this situation is getting worse. All the measures, including Operation Triton despite the humanitarian gloss put on it, are about push-back. The policy now is one of push-back, that is, preventing them from getting in and the Taoiseach stated as much in his opening comments when he spoke of stemming the flow of migration.

That is the policy now - push them back and if they drown, tough luck. They are drowning in huge numbers. The more Europe ramps up its border controls, which it is doing, the more people will die.

What is particularly hypocritical about all this is that the number of people who are trying to cross in this manner represents a tiny proportion of the number of so-called illegals in Europe. I think the term "illegals" is shameful because, in my opinion, no human being is illegal. However, in so far as one defines illegality when it comes to human beings, the vast majority of so-called illegals are people who arrive on planes with work visas. When their work visas run out, they become technically illegal. Their numbers dwarf the number of people who are trying to cross from desperate situations in Syria and north Africa, yet all the focus is on them.

Deputy Adams mentioned the numbers that have come in as 190,000. Some 110,000 people came into this country alone in 2007, which was almost as many as the so-called flood trying to get into Europe. It is not a flood. The crisis is created by the EU's push-back fortress policy. The numbers are absolutely tiny but political cynicism and self-interest are killing those immigrants. It has to stop. The EU-Turkey deal is utterly shameful in that regard. We should demand that the deal be suspended and abandoned, particularly given the utterly shameful human rights record of Turkey in the treatment of its own population.

Did the Taoiseach raise the housing and homelessness emergency with his EU counterparts? In what has to be the supreme exercise in irony and hypocrisy, the EU Commission staff working document recently criticised the Government here for failing to invest sufficiently in infrastructure. That is unbelievable seeing as it was the same troika that demanded and insisted on savaging the capital investment programme as part of the EU-IMF bailout. Nonetheless, they do point to the fact that despite the Government's claim that it is going to do something about housing, the capital investment programme this year will be less than next year's. With all the talk from the Minister, Deputy Coveney, about dealing with the housing and homelessness crisis, he is still using the same figures in terms of the direct provision of council housing as his predecessor, Deputy Kelly. There is no change.

Will the Taoiseach take the advice of the Housing Finance Agency which said that we need to significantly ramp up the level of investment in housing? If that requires increasing our debt or deficit we need to go to the European Union and say that it is right, that we have an infrastructural deficit, specifically in housing, and we want the fiscal rules suspended, or with flexibility in them, so that we can borrow the necessary money to develop a housing programme that will deal with what is an emergency. Is the Taoiseach making that argument with the European Union about our need for a dramatic ramping up of investment in social housing?

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