James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak to the topic of migration and specifically to refugee status and asylum seekers. I have some limited knowledge and experience of this area. I never purport to step in the shoes of anyone who finds themselves in the most unfortunate situation, but I have had the privilege of meeting many such people. I have met them on their home turf in that I had the opportunity to visit sub-Saharan Africa, South Sudan, northern Uganda, many sites such as Imvepi Bidi Bidi, Arua and many such war-torn and difficult regions of the world.

I have spoken to and met many displaced peoples, and seen the conflict as people spilled over. The conflict in South Sudan spilling into north Uganda in recent years was probably the most significant displacement of people in the world as 1 million people crossed that border into north Uganda. Of course, the same region was ravaged with the conflict in Rwanda and the wars in the Congo and neighbouring states for many decades. It is a most unfortunate region, but one that has shown leadership in its generosity of response and the decency and humanity that has been extended.

Seeing people cross the border is a terribly humbling and unforgettable experience. Some people cross the border with nothing but a bag on their back. There is the terrible irony of people whose most prized possessions were the shirt of a European football club where a footballer earns hundreds of thousands of euro, and yet here is somebody whose only possession in the world literally is a torn such shirt and maybe a little backpack with all their possessions in it.

Another prized possession of people crossing the border is a phone allowing them to communicate with family members back home. One of the most popular Facebook sites in Africa was the Bidi Bidi refugee camp because people were putting up messages saying, "I've got here. I've made it. I'm okay." to anybody trying to follow them or connect with them. Social media was a great enabler and communication tool in that regard.

It was both reassuring and horrific to see people beginning to form their own families. One phenomenon of modern refugee camps is that of family formation. It is not the nuclear DNA-based family, but a family of people of similar age or other similar groups. It is family formation based on shared experiences and pooling their lot. One will often see an older teenager serving in the role of mother or father, taking under their wing a number of orphaned children and forming a new family in the camps. That was something that, fortunately or unfortunately, was also beginning to happen. It is something to be embraced and supported. The humanity people show in those situations is amazing.

It is also instructive to consider the approach of the Ugandan Government. There has been tremendous generosity of spirit, but also generosity of materials, capital and resources granted in that situation. People were given plots of land, the right to work, the right to vote and the right to integrate. They were given the right not just to live in a squat under a couple of metres of tent but actually to go and take a quarter acre plot, to be given the tools, the know-how and wherewithal to cultivate that plot, and actually to begin to contemplate a long-term life on such sites. It was a very mature, progressive and most amazing approach to the situation. It also illustrates how so often those with the least to give actually give the most. They are to be applauded for that.

The Ugandan Government was also very cognisant of what it called the host communities, effectively the people already living in the areas into which refugees were being welcomed. It is very much an integrated approach. In the host communities, schools, hospitals and educational resources were also channelled into those host communities in the same measure as to the displaced peoples coming aboard. It helped to integrate everybody. People at their most vulnerable were supported, but those around them were also supported in taking people in.

It is also instructive to consider how international development and international thinking has contributed to this goal - the United Nations approach, the grand bargain that Ban Ki-moon brokered a few years ago. We have to talk about the humanitarian development aid nexus. Put simply, it is the old adage that giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, but teaching a man to fish will feed him for a lifetime. This is talked in grander terminology such as development humanitarian aid. Essentially, it is giving development aid through assisting people to help themselves. Rather than giving them a handout, it is about giving them a hand up.

We can learn from this experience in our own country and should change the direct provision system where people are disempowered. Allowing people to work, trade, network, grow and work among each other is very much the way to go. Asylum seekers and refugees are somewhat of a misnomer. They are people with mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, hopes, dreams, ambitions and fears. They are just like anybody else. They just have the misfortune to be placed in a situation like this. For a country that has always spoken about a céad míle fáilte, it is important that that céad míle fáilte does not just extend to multinationals and to tourists with money to spend. It needs to extend across the board to all who come to our shores.

We were not the first people to inhabit this island and we will not be the last. The Irish language has roots in ancient Indo Sanskrit. We can trace back to Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation. We have had the Fir Bolg, Tuatha Dé Dannan, Melesians, Celts, Picts, Goths, Gauls and Romans. The British empire was only the latest in millennia of development. We were not the first and will not be the last. Let us realise that we have more in common than we have that divides us.

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