Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Among the refugees fleeing Libya, there were 5,000 deaths in 2016. It looks as though the figure will be something similar this year. Those are the official statistics and do not include those refugees whose dinghies and boats sank without a trace in the Mediterranean Sea. These are the sorts of numbers of dead one would associate with a war zone.

We have had Operation Pontus, which has been referred to as humanitarian search and rescue. The proposal now is to buy into Operation Sophia. In essence this is a border control mission. It involves boarding vessels and searching them. It involves seizing goods from ships and seizing the boats themselves. It involves diverting ships of human smugglers and traffickers and so on. Operation Sophia also involves training the Libyan coastguard and its navy.

I will start with a quote from Dr. Conor Kenny, an Irish doctor who is part of Médecins sans Frontières who addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence recently. Dr. Kenny told the committee:

On 23 May this year, my colleagues aboard theMV Aquariusreported that while we had a rescue operation under way a boat with men identifying themselves as Libyan Coast Guard approached one the boats in distress we were assisting, intimidating the passengers and firing their guns in the air. Armed and in uniform, members of the Libyan Coast Guard then proceeded to board one of the rubber boats. They took phones, money and other belongings from the passengers. They attached a line to one rubber dinghy and towed it back towards Libyan waters ... According to one of the people on board one of these boats:When the Libyans pointed their weapons at us, asking us to give them all our money and cell phones and telling us to jump in the water, we did what they said and many of us jumped in. I was not afraid. I preferred to die at sea rather than being repressed and to die in Libya.

I also wish to read into the record of the House the comments of Mr. Sam Taylor, the director of Médecins sans Frontières in Ireland. At the same meeting he said:

MSF is concerned about the humanitarian consequences of some elements of European Union-funded capacity-building initiatives in Libya to which Ireland is contributing, namely, that of the Libyan Coast Guard and conditions within [detention] centres. ... MSF believes that European member states should be focusing on implementing a dedicated search and rescue operation in the central Mediterranean. We caution against any significant shift that would see the priority move away from a rescue operation to predominantly that of an anti-smuggling one, including Ireland’s naval response.

Mr. Taylor went on to make points about the inhumane conditions in the Libyan detention centres.

Yesterday, Deputies received a joint statement from the Irish Refugee Council and the Immigrant Council of Ireland. I also wish to read points from that statement into the record of the House. It stated they were concerned that Ireland would no longer be fully implementing its humanitarian obligations under maritime law and search and rescue missions would become incidental to and not the primary focus of any future operation. They are also concerned that participation in EUNAVFOR, because of the mission's coercion powers and provision for the use of force, may be contrary to Ireland's stated policy of neutrality. In addition, they expressed concern about compliance with non-refoulement, that is, if refugees are fleeing from a country where Irish forces are participating in a broader mission that brings refugees back from whence they came, then Ireland would be in breach of obligations in that regard.

We have a broad measure of agreement on these matters from these benches, from Médecins sans Frontières, from the Irish Refugee Council and from the Immigrant Council of Ireland. Humanitarian search and rescue is one thing but border control missions to bolster fortress Europe are a different matter entirely. The people who will lose out from this are not so much the people smugglers as the people themselves, as shown by the example given by Dr. Conor Kenny.

Ireland is not a neutral country. Perhaps it is neutral in name but in reality we see the way in which Shannon Airport has been offered to the US war machine and so on. Non-involvement in military operations, particularly those of big imperial powers, is what ordinary Irish people mean by neutrality. That is a positive sentiment. We endorse that sentiment and there should be no involvement in Operation Sophia. I have spoken for exactly five minutes and now hand over to Deputy Boyd Barrett.

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