Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if this would be within the rules of the House but I am more than happy to give way if any Members do happen to come in. There is some time left on this debate. This is an important debate and if someone is rushing up from a committee room, and this is in the gift of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, of course, but my colleagues and I are more than happy to be flexible.

I appreciate the debate and the contribution Deputy Daly made in this regard. To address the points he raised in his questions, concerning the memos, the single permit directive and bringing the portal to Government, we intend to do that by the end of March 2024. I am very grateful for the Deputy's contribution. I am fairly sure, if not entirely sure, that he set out that Sinn Féin would be supportive of this proposal. I am very grateful for that.

We then heard eight more minutes of a speech, though, and I would just like to take up the points the Deputy made during that time. I will address one or two things the Deputy said. He accused the Government of often twisting statistics and of doing so to suit a narrative. I thought this was a little bit rich when Deputy Daly then said thousands and thousands of Irish people are applying for visas to go to Australia. He forgot, though, to add the clarity that there is, of course, a backlog because people could not get into Australia for nearly three years. Additionally, the criteria for entry have been extended. Anyone up to the age of 35, therefore, is now eligible to apply for these visas. This is allowing thousands more people to have this opportunity to go to Oz for a couple of years to experience everything there is in that country. Of course, what the Deputy failed to mention, and this is consistently done by his colleagues in this House and in the other House, is that we know average rent costs in Sydney and Melbourne are way higher than here. Anyone who saw on social media last week130 people queuing for a one-bed apartment in Sydney, should know it is not just all doom and gloom here, which is the picture being painted by the Deputy.

Ultimately, the Deputy and I, and I would actually argue everyone in this Chamber, knows well what it was like to grow up in an Ireland where nobody wanted to come to live. We did not have large-scale immigration. People did not want to come here because we did not have the economy, the society or the infrastructure to attract them. This situation has now changed and changed for the better. As I mentioned at the outset, I issued work permits last year for just under 31,000 people from outside the European Economic Area, more than 26,000 from within the EU and 5,000 people from Great Britain. All those people moved here, and they did so because there are good jobs and good lives to be found here. We do, absolutely, have major challenges in our society and no one runs from them. We are, though, addressing them. I refer to building more than 32,500 homes last year and putting record levels of money into town and village renewal schemes across the country to enhance the public realm and encourage business in towns.

People can shake their heads, but we must be accurate. One statistic people often charge the Government with is that everyone is running away to Australia. What they ignore, do not like, try to twist and shrug their shoulders about - this happened again in the Senate last night - is the fact that, ultimately, over the past three years, more Irish people who had emigrated moved home to Ireland than the number who left the country. We have had record levels of net immigration since we have opened inward migration post-Covid. Prior to that, we also had net inward migration. People want to come here to work and to live. People also want to come here to seek refuge from awful situations around the world, and they too are very welcome.

I refer to this notion that loads of people are coming here because we cannot find labour due to everyone emigrating. This is a false narrative and it must be called out. Sinn Féin is getting nowhere constantly making this argument because it rings hollow when the statistics do not back it up. Ultimately, we have a labour crisis across the European Union. I sit around a European Council table every six weeks, and on every topic, the representatives of every member state say there is a problem with getting people to work. There are demographic changes. We have had a rip-roaring economy in recent years that has seen a record intake of people into employment. We have 2.7 million people at work in this country, a figure greater than our entire population in the 1950s. People are not coming here to replace people who are leaving. People are coming here because we are a country that is in the top ten in every single positive index in the world, including in terms of freedom of the press, despite lawsuits by many political people.

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