Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin completely opposes the EU-Turkey migration agreement, as I have said on several occasions in the House. I have raised this on any platform I could, for example, at last week's meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union Affairs, at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade and in this Chamber. I cannot understand how under any criteria the European Commission can designate Turkey as a safe country. How can a country that regularly violates the civil and human rights of its own citizens and others as well as having a complete breakdown in the rule of law be considered safe?

A recently leaked letter from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, showed that it has been kept from visiting asylum seekers after they were deported from Greece to Turkey. At the time the Commission stated that the UNHCR would be a key actor in the resettlement process of the EU-Turkey deal, yet now it appears it is refused access to refugee camps in Turkey. This is a very serious development. Was the Taoiseach aware of this? Did he speak out against it? Did he raise any concerns or unease at this clear violation of human rights oversight when the issue was discussed at the European Council meeting? Maybe he was not aware of this leaked document. Will he and the Minister of State, Deputy Dara Murphy, raise it at the next meeting? This is a very serious development. This was one of the arguments that was put forward at the time.

More worrying is the Commission's plan to copy this type of model and negotiate similar agreements, some with failed states such as Libya and Mali. Bizarrely, this European Council meeting welcomed the progress made in implementing these agreements. Are people not aware of what is happening in Libya and Mali? They welcome as some sort of barrier the fact that we will send people who are fleeing into Europe for protection back to these states. It is a stain on the EU's record that it is negotiating agreements that will violate international law and human rights in the midst of the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.

The Taoiseach said the Irish naval personnel rescued 15,621 people. That is positive work. More than 5,000 people drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach sanctuary in Europe last year. It is literally a graveyard. The EU in its wisdom is now putting them on boats and sending them back supposedly to where they came from or stopped off, where they might have been exploited, robbed or even raped. There does not seem to be anything in the conclusions from this meeting concerning the desperate conditions that refugees are experiencing in Greece and the Balkans during this freezing cold weather. Are the leaders not aware of what is happening? We have only to turn on our televisions to see exactly what is going on.

I wanted to talk about the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, but I do not have enough time.

Like others, I am concerned that civil society groups have expressed fears about the weak protections in CETA in respect of the environment, workers' rights, public health, food safety, public procurement and the impact on investment. Those groups are also worried about CETA regulations being rushed through without any proper scrutiny.

I am appalled by how the European Commission and the European Council have continually forced CETA through and overstepped the democratic process, particularly through the provisional application of the agreement, before member states' parliaments have ratified it.

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