Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I, too, will try to be brief. This is important and timely legislation. Members may not be aware of it, but today, 8 December, is the 20th anniversary of the finding of a container in Wexford, my home town, wherein Kurds and Turkish men, women and children were entombed, five of whom died. There was a memorial service this morning, at which the chairman of Wexford County Council laid a wreath.

We need robust legislation to tackle those responsible, who make money from the misery of human trafficking, but this has to be done in a way that facilitates humanitarian actions. I know that is the Minister of State's intention as we have debated it at length. The Minister of State tells us that section 9 of the Bill provides the humanitarian assistance defence. The issue about which we have been arguing over the last three nights we have been debating this legislation is that it is a defence that can be deployed by humanitarian organisations post facto, that is, after a prosecution is commenced. We argued on previous amendments that that is the wrong balance and that there should be an exemption for clearly defined humanitarian action such that any humanitarian actor assisting a migrant cannot fall foul of or be caught in legislation designed to deal with traffickers.

At the core of the Minister of State's argument is a simple fact that since the initial legislation was enacted 20 years ago, there have been only two prosecutions. The Minister of State has told us that that is because it is impossible to prosecute a human trafficker or a people smuggler because financial gain has to be proved and that has proven impossible. Unfortunately, the flaw in the Minister of State's argument is that he does not know that to be the fact because he has never provided us with the data as we do not collect data. How many prosecutions have failed? How many investigations have reached the point of "if only we could prove this net point, we could prosecute". We do not know that.

Deputy Connolly's amendment No. 5 provides that going forward we should be armed with that data. That is not only a reasonable proposal, it is an essential one. The amendment provides that the Minister shall, on an annual basis following the passing of this Act, lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas detailing the number of prosecutions not pursued due to a humanitarian defence, the number of prosecutions pursued where a humanitarian defence was employed and any impact which this Act may have had in respect of the level of engagement of humanitarian organisations in humanitarian activity in respect of smuggled persons. Surely, that is data we need to have to know that we are actually doing what the Minister of State or the House wants to do, namely, to put in place robust legislation that will enable us to prosecute people traffickers who are gaining financial benefit from human misery while, at the same time, ensuring that we in no way criminalise, even to the point of threatening to prosecute, bona fide humanitarian actors, be they organisations or individuals, who are simply motivated in rescuing people in peril through desperation, whether embarking in the back of a truck into the ports of Rosslare or Waterford or on a rubber raft approaching our coast, or the coast of any other country because this legislation is multinational in scope with international jurisdiction.

I ask the Minister of State to consider and accept these amendments. This legislation is important and I will be supporting it and recommending that my party supports it, but it will be flawed if we do not have the data that Deputy Connolly's amendments would require the State to provide to the Oireachtas on an annual basis.

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