Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I propose to share my time equally with Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. I very much welcome the initiative and the spirit of this debate. I applaud the motive and the actions of those who have been seeking to build cross-party, all-party and no-party support for a motion on this truly important matter, a motion my party is certainly enthusiastic to endorse. I am sure the supporters of the motion will understand and share my concern when I say that this should not be a simple once-off gesture, a visceral response to a crisis we see on our television screens which affects and motivates everybody in our country. The situation is far too serious to think it can be dealt with by way of a single spontaneous act, no matter how important doing that single act is, but we need to act.

I have to agree with other speakers, and I do not say this in a divisive sense, that the three Government speakers tonight have failed to appreciate the mood of this House and nation, including that of their Deputies, regarding this matter. I listened with care to the Government speakers. For the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to say that to date neither the French nor British authorities have asked EU partners to intervene or assist them in relation to the Calais situation and that as we have not been asked we do not need to do much is not what the Irish people want and it is not what this Parliament, unanimously I believe, would want.

Mr. Fred McBride, the chief executive officer of Tusla, pointed out a few days ago that his agency receives referrals of about 100 unaccompanied minors each and every year. Thankfully, as the Tánaiste said, we are dealing with these children more humanely now than we did in the past. Tusla now attempts to treat unaccompanied minors equally to all other children who fall within its care without differentiation. They are no longer housed in hostels and are instead housed, if possible, in foster care, or supported lodgings or proper residential placements. Most of them are now allocated a social worker. There has been a very marked decrease in the number of unaccompanied minors who simply go missing, which was a shocking situation for so long.

However, one major problem remains and it is what to do with unaccompanied minors when they reach the age of majority at 18. Some of them if they have applied for asylum must then enter the direct provision system and they face other challenges. Despite what Ministers say, we do not have a targeted national policy. We do not have a clear strategy for unaccompanied minors.

No matter how important and welcome the agreement to take 200 from Calais next week is, it is not a substitute for a comprehensive strategy for the future. The Department of Justice and Equality has responded to queries about accepting children from the so-called Calais Jungle by highlighting our commitments to children coming from the Greek programme and the Tánaiste did so again tonight. That would make sense if, in fact, we were receiving an enormous stream of unaccompanied children in need of resettlement under the Greek programme. The last Government set up the Irish refugee protection programme as a response to the refugee crisis that was unfolding before our eyes. We pledged to accept 4,000 migrants by the end of 2017. There were two channels by which that was to happen. First, there was the EU relocation mechanism established to assist with the pressure on Italy and Greece. Second, there was the UNHCR-led refugee resettlement programme which is focused on resettling refugees from Jordan and Lebanon. I visited the refugee camps in Jordan and I saw the dreadful situation of people who had been wrenched from normal life a matter of months earlier and had their lives shredded and were now in tents. The UNHCR resettlement programme seems to be working in so far as this State is concerned but the EU relocation mechanism is painfully slow. We will be lucky to have accepted 350 or so people by the end of year. We are told that Ireland told Greece that we want to accept unaccompanied minors under this programme but that message does not seem to have gotten through. We are told there are inevitable administration difficulties and inevitable delays. First the Greek authorities must find case files for the minors they wish to relocate here. Then officials from Tusla must travel to Greece to assess the needs of those particular minors and so on. The Department has said it does not know how many unaccompanied minors will be accepted by this route but it is, in large part, up to the Greek authorities. We must say that our will is to prioritise our commitments to vulnerable children and provide them with shelter. The Irish Examinergave us some hard facts yesterday. Perhaps they are disputed by the Tánaiste. Ireland, according to the Irish Examineryesterday, had accepted one unaccompanied minor under the relocation programme. That is what our prioritised commitment has achieved to date, bearing in mind that an estimated 2,500 children in Greece await relocation, one sixth of them under the age of 14. By the end of October, 75 of these children were to be relocated - 39 in Finland, 18 in Spain, nine in Luxembourg, four in Germany, three in Holland and two in Portugal, and we were to take one. We cannot use our commitments to the Greek process as grounds for turning our back on Calais.

Approximately 1,500 children and young people are directly affected by the closure of the Calais Jungle. A generous and humanitarian response to that situation is required immediately. As everybody who has had any discussion about this knows, 800 families have volunteered. I have been approached and I would say there is nobody in this House who has not had conversations with individuals who say they will take somebody into their family. We all know those people. They offer a welcome, a home and an opportunity to have a proper life in an English speaking country, which above all is what they want and it is within our ability to do it. It is the right thing to do for the children in Calais. On an ongoing basis we need to develop a clear strategy for the future. We need to redouble our efforts with Greece to get that programme effectively up and running. We need to demonstrate that when Ireland makes unaccompanied minors our priority, it means we are willing to accept a set number on an ongoing basis.

If we are to make a contribution to addressing this global tragedy on what I have described as an ambitious, coherent and sustained basis, which is the will of the House, we need a properly resourced and managed foster care system. What we have pledged to do is but a small start. This House will unite if the Tánaiste and Ministers, Deputies Flanagan and Zappone, put forward an ambitious policy programme.

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