Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When we achieved what I considered to be a huge achievement in getting a global compact for refugees, which effectively was to try to get a global agreement on how countries should respond to refugees, there was a lot of disagreement on it in the UN. Unfortunately, some very vocal EU member states did not support it. Of course, within the European Union itself, where we should be giving leadership by example to the rest of the world, we have had huge difficulty in agreeing a collective approach towards virtually anything to do with migration, quite frankly. In recent weeks, the European Commission has introduced a new proposed pact on migration and asylum, for which it hopes to be able to gain support throughout the European Union. Certainly Ireland will play a very constructive role in helping it to do this so we can ensure there is genuine burden sharing throughout the EU in terms of countries making a contribution, as I believe we should, to the migration challenges. There are numerous ways in which we can do this. No country should be able to opt out.

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