Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Last week, the Taoiseach made a full commitment to supporting Ukraine's sovereignty. In the same week, he made an argument for Ireland to cede sovereignty to the European Union in the EU migration pact. Sovereignty is no small thing. It means that the people of this country can self-determine the laws that govern us, they can influence the elected representatives and hold them to account. When decisions are made in Brussels or Berlin, Irish people find it very hard to influence those decisions and we certainly cannot hold the decision-makers to account. The banking crash was a perfect example of this. The EU forced billions of euro of bailouts on Irish citizens. It did enormous damage to this country and we are still recovering, with a lost generation of investment in health, housing and infrastructure. The Government also signed up to greenhouse gas emission targets but it will fall well short of those legally binding targets by 2030. This will cost the State hundreds of millions of euro in fines. In answer to an Aontú parliamentary question, we learned that the EU is fining Ireland tens of millions of euro at the moment. The EU fined Ireland €2.5 billion for wastewater issues, €1.5 million on environmental impact assessments, €17 million for the Derrybrien wind farm, €2 million for failure in respect of the money laundering directive, €2.5 million for failures regarding the audiovisual media services directive and €500,000 in relation to the European electronic communications code. The State is currently in court fighting fines regarding what is happening in the bogs. The Government is now looking to sign up to further EU commitments and it is already failing on the commitments it signed up to and getting fined.

The immigration policy of this country so far has been a disaster. The Government has failed consistently to differentiate between those who need help and those who do not. Aontú parliamentary questions have shown that, in the last five years, 85% of people who received deportation orders never had them actioned. I have that parliamentary question from the Taoiseach when he was Minister for Justice, so he should not shake his head. We found out that 5,000 people came through Dublin Airport with no travel documents last year, and we also found out that the Government is not asking 75% of asylum seekers how they came into the country. Now, the Government is seeking to outsource this immigration policy to the EU. At the heart of that migration pact is the idea of a mandatory solidarity pool. States must accept immigrants or financially contribute. Numbers and amounts of money are based on population and GDP. Our GDP, as we know, is already artificially elevated. We find it impossible to accommodate the migrants who come to this country. Given that Ireland is already being fined all over the place in terms of our commitments, which we are not meeting, how much will it cost the State to sign up to the EU migration pact? What are the minimum and maximum amounts?

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