Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ministers for staying here for the entire debate. We often have Private Members' debates where Ministers are not in a position to stay for the whole thing.

I was struck by a comment made by my colleague Deputy Gannon earlier. The Deputy asked about what would happen if he was sitting in the Minister's seat and the Minister as sitting in his during the current situation? What I hope the Minister would do is what we are doing, which is raising the matter and jumping up and down. On the basis of his contribution and from what I have heard him say previously, I do not believe that he thinks what happened was right. We are trying to hold the Minister to account because there are failings. The people involved were failed. We have an important job to do. We are doing it today by raising this matter in the Dáil. It is really challenging and difficult. I imagine that some days the Minister wonders why he is doing it and why we are where we are. We all have a role to play. Our role is saying that the Government needs to put a stop to this kind of treatment. That can be done directly by the Minister through his Department or by him putting pressure on his Government partners. I am of the view that a large part of the problem lies with the latter. As Minister, that is his role. Hopefully, we will see a change in how all of this is done.

The reason this matter is incredibly important - and I have been thinking about it great deal over the past number of days - is that this is not just an issue of immigration, of the men involved or of ensuring that people's human rights are upheld. If the Minister does not get this right, it will create an Ireland none of us wants. There is a real risk when it comes to social cohesion. We have communities turning on each other. People think that they can say what they like - they do so quite freely - and use words and slurs that were never previously acceptable. We really needed to look elsewhere in respect of this matter. We missed an opportunity to look at other countries, see what was happening there and redouble our efforts to ensure that it was not going to happen here. Unfortunately, we are past that point now.

I understand comments made by the Ceann Comhairle. What I am seeing is that whether it is online or in discussions with people, either on a personal basis or in this Chamber, misinformation is happening. There is a responsibility on each of us to call this out. Using words like "open borders" would imply that we have open borders, but we do not. We need to start talking about these things. When we hear people refer to unvetted men, we need to point out that no one in this country is vetted unless they are working with children or vulnerable people. We need to start having those conversations. It is hard to have them; I know because done it. The phrase "military age men" is the kind of terminology that is seeping into natural discourse. I believe that most people do not want that here If the silent majority do not talk and push back, then the type of terminology to which I refer becomes normalised. If we have people in this House calling others names or referring to them as loonies or completely disregarding EU law and saying that there is no need for the State to apply it, there is a responsibility on each of us to push back because the risk is way too high.

I do not know if we are at the point of no return, but we have to do absolutely everything we can to try to get on top of this and ensure that we do not go any further down this road. We need to treat all people with respect. The State and its organs need to do that also. We have laid out our position and our points. I hope that the Minister will take them on board and that he will push back within the Government in instances where he feels it is failing again.

See this speech in context