Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will speak directly to this motion and will not stray into the issue of the EU migration pact, which is not on the agenda today. Migrants make up a significant share of people who have been detected as trafficked into forced labour, which can be more properly described as modern day slavery. It is a lucrative area for criminal networks that engage in this activity, as the Minister has already outlined. The risks increase when migration is disorderly, both when migrants are on the move but also around the circumstances after they arrive. While it is necessary to prevent, detect and investigate what is a trade in human beings, this requires the strengthening of interagency co-operation and co-ordination at EU level. We agree this is necessary but it also requires us not to see Europe as somewhere out there, as it were, but instead to consider what we are doing very carefully so as not to be contributors to this misery. One of the things called for by this motion is the improving of information sharing. By offloading to the private sector responsibility for housing migrants, including the management of people in those centres, which we are currently doing, it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to share information simply because we cannot share information we do not have. We need to remember at all times that those who are being trafficked are often young but, in the vast majority of cases, are also vulnerable. Shockingly, there are currently 317 children under the age of 17 or younger missing in Ireland. Many of those would have been migrants who were unaccompanied minors. A particular focus is needed here.

I mention an article written by John Mooney in The Sunday Times last year where he highlighted some of the risks we are not properly managing. The articles states the Garda believes organised crime gangs are exploiting the immigration crisis to generate income and launder money in what is now considered a highly lucrative form of illegal activity. The article refers to one group taking advantage of the relaxation in planning laws to become involved in accommodation centres. He goes on to state, "Experts say Ireland has now become a primary route for illegal migration into Britain."

Anna Sergi, a University of Essex expert on transnational crime, said government support to help migrants presented multiple opportunities for organised crime. She added, "The supports are usually handled through emergency protocols, which at times means less controls and controls that are enforced after tenders have been allocated." She further added that Irish gangs are replicating what is happening across Europe, where immigration has become a lucrative source of criminal revenue. She added:

The mafia in Rome is essentially co-ordinating the contracts for food and accommodation for refugee centres. The key to understanding what is happening is to understand that the allocation of emergency funds is open to abuse.

We have to take that very seriously.

In the same article, Dave McInerney, a retired garda who worked in the immigration system and with ethnic minorities, urged the Government to be mindful of the risks posed by such crime groups to the immigration system. He said:

This area presents lots of opportunities to criminals, both Irish and foreign. Criminals have been exploiting weaknesses in the migrant system for years, but it could get worse as the issue grows.

The article went on to say that victims of human trafficking are often too afraid of being deported to contact the authorities to report exploitation. A very clear thing we can do is make sure people are not penalised for coming forward. That is an absolute must if we are to get the information that goes to the source of the problem. The retrofitting of buildings to make them suitable for housing asylum seekers also provides money-laundering opportunities for gangs who wish to spend cash derived from drug dealing, extortion and other types of crimes.

Where people without means can purchase buildings for millions of euro, that has to raise a red flag and that red flag should not be ignored. We know there have been newspaper articles about that and I could draw the Minister's attention to some of them myself. If we do not put time, energy and resources into prevention, it becomes a never-ending cycle of detection and investigations and an under-reporting of a really serious issue. It will be costly and time consuming anyway, but if we are to limit the damage to these human beings, prevention has to be where we put a huge amount of attention. We have to remember that Europe is not somewhere just out there, that it is here and that we need to take responsibility. I am quite concerned about what has been happening to date in terms of how loose it is.

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