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

We are sharing time. I want to put on the record that I hate everything about Trump and his Administration but he was not imposed. He was elected, and whether we like it or not, that will be the scenario unless something intervenes in the coming four years.

It is obvious that the Taoiseach will travel to Washington for St. Patrick's Day but it is regrettable that he will do so without a motion that could be commonly agreed by this Dáil. Deputy Róisín Shortall and I, along with others, having regard to the requirements some of the civil society groups wanted included, put forward a motion on which we believed there might be common ground. It states:

This Parliament strongly and categorically condemns President Trump’s Executive Order which adopts a targeted ban on refugees and migrants from certain countries. This Executive Order amounts to discrimination on the grounds of both nationality and religion - itself a gross violation of freely accepted international human rights obligations. We affirm that this Parliament stands in solidarity with US civil society organisations and all those in the US working to uphold the legal rights of all those affected by this discriminatory Executive Order.

Unfortunately, while it almost got there the motion did not receive common agreement. It would have been far better to have that kind of statement passed by this Dáil than to trust the judgment of the Taoiseach to represent this country's viewpoint. President Trump is an extremely strong personality; none of us need to be told that. I believe the Taoiseach is not a match for him. I would not have confidence in a sufficiently strong message being delivered. It was a missed opportunity not to have passed that motion.

An irony, which is important to point out, is that the coalition that was put together, the so-called war on terror, primarily involved the United States and the United Kingdom, yet those two countries are on the fault line now with regard to immigration. Those are the countries that largely destabilised the very region from which they are now refusing to accept migrants, and some from the most extreme circumstances. Is there a viable risk? Has that risk been analysed? David Bier from the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity is involved in analysing immigration policy. With regard to the risks he stated:

The order would ban all people entering the US from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen, and yet no terrorist from these places has carried out a lethal attack in the United States. Indeed, no Libyans or Syrians have ever been convicted for planning such an attack. Moreover, the likelihood of being killed by any refugee from any country is just 1 in 3.64 billion a year. This discrimination is arbitrary and cannot be rationally justified based on an assessment of the risk.

He went on to point out the US policy during the years of the Second World War and Roosevelt's Administration refusing to admit Jewish people fleeing the Holocaust. The risk suits a political agenda and evaluating whether that risk is real needs hard facts, not fake news. The idea of our Taoiseach having a nice photo opportunity with a bowl of shamrock, with perhaps a patronising pat on the back, will not be acceptable to most people in Ireland. The Taoiseach must make it very clear in advance of travelling to the US exactly what he intends to say and how he will represent us on this visit. That is critically important. A refusal to travel this year would be a refusal to travel next year and the following two years, and we would then begin to wonder whether there was a loss of influence. We may be a small island on the periphery of Europe but we are a country not without significant influence in the United States, largely because of the large Irish diaspora in the United States.

There is an opportunity to say something significant. The war on terror started under the Bush Administration. It continued under the Obama Administration. It is legitimate to question our role in providing Shannon as an assistance in what has happened over those two Administrations. We are not without questions to ask ourselves. Before the Taoiseach's visit happens, if he is still the Taoiseach, we need to know what will be said. We need to revisit the prospect of getting all-party agreement on a motion rather than the Taoiseach going without an imprimatur from the Parliament-----

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