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

I commend all the members of the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality for completing this comprehensive report. I refer particularly to the Chairman of the committee, my party colleague, an Teachta Ó Caoláin, who has overseen the creation of this report. I join others in welcoming the representatives of Migrant Rights Centre Ireland and Nasc Ireland who are in the Gallery. I also welcome the members of the undocumented community living here and the many people from the Syrian community who are present for this debate.

I hope this report will add significantly and positively to the debate on immigration, asylum and the refugee crisis. I welcome the recommendation in the report that a regularisation scheme for undocumented migrants in Ireland should be introduced in a timely manner. I share this view. As Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on foreign affairs, I have lobbied on behalf of thousands of undocumented Irish citizens in the US. I have been in the White House and I have been to the US Congress to meet Congressmen and Senators. I do not believe there is any contradiction in also working on behalf of the undocumented citizens of other countries who are living in Ireland. I do not see any difference in that regard. I am very proud of my involvement in both campaigns.

I commend Migrants Rights Centre Ireland on all the work it has done in this area. Those involved in the centre are probably sick of the amount of cases I have directed towards them. The reality is that many of us ask the people with the expertise to do such work. I would not like to think that I see myself as an expert in this area in any way. I thank the undocumented migrants who have shared their stories as part of the campaign for regularisation. This brave and positive move has helped to put a human face on the undocumented in Ireland.

Regularisation is not just the smart thing to do; it is also the right thing to do. No young person should have to grow up here undocumented, just as no older people should have to live here undocumented. Workers and their families should have the right to move from the shadows and into the open. The undocumented and their families should have a chance to live in dignity and safety, free from the awful worry of the unexpected knock on the door in the middle of the night that tells them they are being brought into custody with the possibility of being put on an airplane to God knows where.

I join other Deputies in commending the committee's recommendation that Ireland’s system of direct provision should not be more than a short-term measure. It is unacceptable for individuals to be living within the system on a long-term basis. I think there is collective agreement that this has to end. People should not be spending such lengthy periods of time in the system. People have been languishing in this repressive system for far too long. It is time for Ireland to abolish direct provision and replace it with a system that has human rights and the protection of human dignity at its core. It should be abolished. I am pleased that the committee is of the view that the denial of the right to seek paid employment is demeaning and is a serious infringement of the human rights of the individual applicant.

As other Deputies have said, there is an unprecedented refugee crisis across the globe. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, over 65 million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes because of war, poverty, hunger and oppression. Some of them have been displaced within their own countries and others have been forced to leave their countries over dangerous land and sea routes. Ireland has to take a leadership role in responding to the refugee crisis. Many of us on the Opposition benches and some people in Government circles believe we are falling short. Many countries with fewer resources than Ireland are playing such a role. I will mention the example of Uganda. An Irish delegation has just returned from there. Uganda has taken in 1 million refugees from South Sudan and provided them with plots of land where they can live and grow food. I could mention many other examples, including countries like Lebanon and Jordan in the Middle East.

While I welcome the reference in the committee's report to the Government's commitment to resettling 4,000 refugees in Ireland, I share the report's view that this is inadequate by comparison to the scale of the crisis. We must look at increasing this number. That is probably not a popular view in certain quarters. As a nation, we have the resources at our disposal to help these vulnerable people while tackling inequality and poverty in Ireland at the same time. Our constraints do not mean we can deal with just one of these issues. It should not be about favouring one group of people at the expense of another. People often ask "what about our own?", but I suggest that if the Government takes a smarter approach and acts on the huge level of goodwill among the population, it will realise that it is not a case of one or the other. We have the resources to look after our own homeless people and others who are living in poverty while also looking after those who have been forced from their homes.

I agree with Nasc’s campaign - I am told nasc is the Irish word for link - calling on the Government to introduce a humanitarian admission scheme to give people living in Ireland, either naturalised Irish citizens or legally resident refugees and migrants, the opportunity to sponsor family members who are currently displaced or in conflict zones and bring them here to safety.

I am conscious that many people come to us with their own private cases and I will give an example of just one of those to put a human face on some of the migrants who come here. A man and his wife came in to see me. His father had been beheaded in Mosul and his brother had been killed by ISIS in Mosul. They eventually smuggled the mother and another member of the family to Turkey and he was trying to subsidise that. He wanted to try to get the family to Ireland. He was in a very good job. He is married to a European woman. They have two children who were born in Ireland but there was a difficulty in that regard. He wanted to sponsor his own family. The stories he had to tell were horrific. He spoke about where his mother is now living in Turkey and so on and the difficulties the family are going through. He spoke about having to put on hold extending his own family and waiting in the system for the Department of Justice and Equality to respond to the possibility of bringing his family here. That is just one example, and I am talking in terms of a sponsor. All of us in this House could give such examples.

I firmly believe that members of Irish society - citizens, community and faith based groups, charities and non-governmental organisations, NGOs, business and universities - should be able to co-sponsor the application, providing financial, social and institutional backing and thus improving a person’s real life opportunities for integration, easing the financial burden on the host family in Ireland and on the Government. That is done successfully in other countries. I can give examples in Canada and so on.

It is important as part of this debate to again put on the record my complete opposition to the EU-Turkey deal on refugees. Turkey is a country with a deplorable human rights record and a history of discriminating against minorities, like the Kurds, yet in this deal it is deemed to be a safe country of origin by the European Union.

To make matters worse, we are replicating that deal with other countries. Before the Dáil went into recess for the summer, Sinn Féin spoke out and voted against the Government’s motion for Irish involvement in the EU military mission, Operation Sophia, in the Mediterranean. Operation Sophia is primarily a military response to a humanitarian problem. It responds to the symptoms and pushes people back to Libya rather than addressing the causes of the refugee and humanitarian crisis. It also involves training the Libyan coastguard, which has been accused of human rights violations, so that they can return desperate refugees to Libya where they are at the mercy of armed militias. That is what we are sending people back to.

A Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, recent publication documents significant human rights violations in detention centres in Libya. I have seen the photographs. One would not keep an animal in the overcrowded facilities to which they are sending people. They are appalling. The EU’s policy of ring-fencing migrants in Libya must come to an end. MSF’s president has said that EU states are knowingly handing people over to criminals. I would for further than that. I would say we are handing over people to rapists, slave traders and murderers. That is the reality for many of these people.

Ireland should not have continued its purely search and rescue mission. It is commended throughout the world, but the direction we have gone on it is wrong. I again call on Ireland to remove itself from the military mission and to end these EU agreements that involve deporting vulnerable refugees back to war torn countries and appalling regimes.

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