Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is going down a dangerous road. The rise of far right ideology and anti-immigration sentiment in Ireland is worrying. It is something we have seen in other countries for many years but it had not been an issue here. Unfortunately, that has changed but when you look ahead to 2024 the world is becoming a scary place. When we look at what is going on in Gaza, at Putin's war in Ukraine and the election in America, which looks like it will be divisive, we should not be fanning the flames on all of this propaganda, misinformation and outright lies being spread on social media. I accept that the Government needs to communicate better but the Deputy knows as well as I do that cutting through the lies on social media is not easy. There is an onus on every one of us in this House to show leadership. There is a lot of misinformation out there about immigration and as a Government we need to communicate better, as I said earlier. It is incumbent on every one of us to do that.

Migration has been good for Ireland and I will give some information to the House in that regard. The social insurance contributions from foreign nationals, that is, the PRSI contributions, amount to €3 billion per annum. Over the past ten years, it has amounted to €17 billion. That is coming from the workers in our health service, hospitality sector, food processing plants and other key sectors. That is helping us to pay for the pensioners in this country and for unemployment benefits. It is a wonder how some people can be at protests in the middle of the day when everyone else is working. We have had to announce more work permits recently because we cannot get staff in certain sectors.

The Government is dealing with an emergency situation. Over 107,000 Ukrainians have come here and there is a growth in the number of people applying for international protection. The Ukrainian war is going on much longer than anticipated, unfortunately, and people are staying longer. We are transferring from an emergency situation to a plan that allows us to accommodate the people coming here and to comply with our international obligations. We have a rules-based system and some 800 people were deported last year. We have doubled the number of staff in the Department of Justice in order that we can get decisions on international protection applications more quickly.

The challenges we are responding to are happening across Europe. It is something the Government is committed to dealing with. We have dealt with other challenges and people on the Opposition benches said at the time that we were doing the wrong thing. However, it turned out we were doing the right thing. There are challenges and we are dealing with them. I know the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is working extremely hard in his Department.

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