Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The reality is that people who are rescued in the Mediterranean are being returned to these detention centres. I have had questions and discussions on this previously. I have met NGOs, including Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, staff, both nurses and doctors, who have been working on the ships and in the detention centres. In the centres, there is appalling abuse of human rights, starvation, malnutrition, rape and violence, and there is a lack of care. To add to that, now some of these detention centres are caught in the fighting between the self-styled Libyan National Army, led by Field Marshall Haftar, and the UN-backed Government in Libya. It is adding to the misery that they are now caught in the crossfire there, and we know about that particular case in that detention centre approximately 25 km from Tripoli. There have been conflicting reports. I merely want to stress the importance of getting accurate information and then, when we have the information, that there is action taken on that particular information.

There was also a report that some of the refugees were being forced into assisting the fighters. All that is going on is appalling. It is immoral, unethical and downright cruel to consign those so-called "rescued" from the Mediterranean to a worse fate by sending them to these centres. There are tens of millions of euro going into support the coastguard in Libya for the refugees to go back to those detention centres.

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