Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have a small number of people who are recklessly carrying out delinquent attacks on buildings through pure racism, and we all know that. They are a tiny number of people. The system which has evolved is one Governments have stood over for a couple of decades since Senator Michael McDowell was Minister and direct provision was first brought in as a temporary measure. The problem is that the temporary measure has grown into a mess and has continued.

Successive Governments have set out a playbook that the far right - I sometimes find it difficult to call them far right because it gives these lunatics a kind of legitimacy on the political spectrum - can use as a playground to manipulate people because of the disappointment and failures we have seen for decades. Austerity is at the core of much of this. For the past decade or more, going back to the economic crash, many communities have felt let down and left behind. The only thing they see coming into their communities after all of that is a direct provision centre or hotel opening to look after people who come from abroad. They are very welcome and the vast majority come here for a genuine reason, whether they have papers with them or not. People leaving Afghanistan will not get a passport. People need to cop on when they comment on people coming here without papers.

The reality is that people who come here do so because they want a safe place to go and deserve to be looked after. We have an opportunity to try to do that. However, the problem we have is that the Government has made a mess of this up to now and we need to change that. There is a plan to provide large accommodation centres. We need to do that with haste and not be talking about it in another five or six years' time. We actually need to do it, and do it quickly, to ensure that we can provide for these people.

The majority come here for genuine reasons and we need to process them quickly and ensure they can be part of our workforce and take up the employment that many of the employers say they need workers for but cannot get. Many employers are going to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to seek permits to bring in people from abroad to carry out many of these jobs.

Some people have a certain sense of apprehension about people who come here from abroad. When we ask them which foreigners they know they tell us they know the guy who changes the wheels on their car and say he is a lovely fella and the person who works in the supermarket is a lovely girl. All of the foreigners people know are great people but there is something in their head that the stranger is the problem and issue. As my colleague, Deputy Pa Daly, said, we need to try to develop a process to deal with the lies that are being spread and the manipulation of people through social media and other outlets. The Government has the primary responsibility for dealing with that, and it has failed to do so appropriately and properly.

Communities are facing difficulties. One of the things people continually say is that they cannot get an appointment in a hospital or with a GP and that schools are full. These are issues that were there before anybody came here from abroad, but when people see new people coming into their community they expect that the competition for scarce resources will increase. That is why the Government needs to put more resources in place to reassure people that is not going to happen. The Government has completely failed to do that, and continues to fail to do that.

A centre was due to open up and the community came together and said it was prepared to take X amount of people, provided that the community got extra resources and was looked after. The Department told the community a building can hold so many and that was it. There was a stonewall kind of attitude, which creates more and more animosity in people. As I said, it creates an environment where these agitators and headcases can continue to manipulate people and bring them down the path of fear, which generates more and more hatred. That creates an atmosphere whereby a tiny number of delinquent people will then go off and burn buildings, attack people or whatever.

We can state that the Garda is doing this, that or the other and the Government is opposed to what is happening and all of that, but the Government also has a responsibility to ensure that it does not create fertile ground for this stuff to grow. That is what it has done. That needs to end, and end quickly.

The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Putin has caused an awful lot of issues. Many from Ukraine have come here. That has, of course, put the largest amount of stress on the system. We recognise that. While the war continues to rage in Ukraine, it will come to an end some day. At some point, we will see a relaxation of the situation. This is a crisis for communities and politics that the Government has not dealt with efficiently and effectively enough. I hope in the future when we look back on this we can learn lessons from it and ensure that when we are in another economic crash or there is another economic problem that we do not sow the seeds of this kind of division again by manipulating people and ripping communities apart by taking away their services and ensuring they have no hope or future. That is how so many communities feel.

At the end of the day, we can come here and make statements about what is happening, the burnings and other issues. Ultimately, politics has to work. Politics can only work if the Government provides the resources required in order for the people who live here and those who come from other places to be able to live decent lives.

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