Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The way this pact has been handled is an insult to the Dáil and the people who elected us. At every step of the way, the Opposition has pleaded with the Government to treat this issue carefully and allow for sufficient oversight and debate. At every step, however, the Government has ignored those pleas. The only actual scrutiny of the pact before today was two three-hour sessions in the justice committee in late April. One of those sessions was only added at short notice when the Government's cavalier approach to oversight was the subject of significant public anger. At the time, we were told the committee debate had to be curtailed because the Government wanted to hold a Dáil vote on the pact in early May. Here we are, six weeks later, only now debating this pact in this House because the Government buried it until after the elections. People can see through this cynical manipulation. The Dáil debates on the pact this week are designed to give a veneer of democratic oversight but in reality it is being rammed through these Houses with almost no debate or scrutiny. At the end, we will have an all-or-nothing vote, instead of a vote on individual measures.

Meanwhile, media reports today have revealed the plans to fast-track legislation giving effect to the migration pact. Clearly, the Government views today's debate as nothing more than a rubber-stamping exercise. There is no intention to take any of our legitimate human rights concerns into account. Rushing this debate is not just cynical. Rather, it is dangerous because the absence of considered and informed debate in this House has ramifications for our society. It allows misinformation and disinformation, particularly online, to spread like wildfire and with very little push-back from anyone in the Government. To make matters worse, we are still waiting for the Government's long-promised communications strategy on migration. I do not know if it will materialise before the general election or if the Government is waiting until afterwards but the lack of urgency is incredible.

The Government’s entire approach to migration has been panicked, reactive and shambolic. It is leading to chaos, division and rising hate across this country. This persistent Government mismanagement is causing real and lasting harm, particularly for minority communities which are experiencing racist abuse and violence as a direct result of incompetence. The level of virulent racism in this country is disgusting and shameful. The targeting of candidates from minority communities during the recent elections was just one example of this. It was a direct attack on our democracy.

When is the Government going to get it together on this? Talking tough on migration and echoing the language of the far right is not a strategy. We need a fair, humane and efficient asylum system. Crucially, we need to vastly increase resources, training and staff at the International Protection office in order that claims can be dealt with speedily and fairly.

There has been a lot of right-wing commentary about the migration pact, borders and sovereignty. Bizarrely, much of this commentary, straight from the Tory handbook, has come from the Sinn Féin benches. As a result, much of the opposition to the migration pact has been framed in this divisive and insular way. I want to specifically distance myself from those kinds of objections. Instead, I want to talk about the very serious human rights concerns the Social Democrats have with this pact, including the border procedure, the potential for detention camps, the stripping away of the right to legal advice and the fiction of non-entry to Europe. We are far from the only ones who are expressing these concerns. Over 160 NGOs, including Oxfam, Amnesty and Médecins Sans Frontières, are opposed to the pact. All of these human rights experts agree that the pact is dangerous because the fundamental right to claim asylum and international protection, which refugees have enjoyed for more than seven decades, is being eroded. Eve Geddie, from Amnesty International stated:

This agreement will set back European asylum law for decades to come. Its likely outcome is a surge in suffering on every step of a person’s journey to seek asylum in the EU.

Even former Green Party MEPs shared these concerns, which is why they voted against most of the pact in the European Parliament. We cannot say we were not warned about this pact and what it will mean if all of it is enacted. It will lead to more people in detention centres at EU borders, including families with children and unaccompanied minors. It will also lead to reduced safeguards for people seeking asylum, substandard border asylum procedures and more people being refused a fair and full assessment of their asylum claims. None of the pressing problems facing our own asylum system, and others across Europe will be solved by adopting the pact in full. It will not solve the chronic underinvestment or complete absence of the six State reception centres which were promised years ago. It will not prevent EU countries from continuing to use illegal and often violent push-back policies. In fact, it facilitates them. The pact makes clear that outsourcing immigration processes will continue to be a core EU approach. It is one that the Taoiseach himself has endorsed. A few weeks ago, he said:

... processing asylum applications in a third country is worth considering. The EU Migration Pact allows some states the option to shift asylum applications to safe, third countries.

What is the reality of that outsourcing? It is our own cruel Rwanda policy, a policy that the Tories never managed to get off the ground, and a policy of preferring that thousands of people drown, rather than resourcing search-and-rescue missions. Since 2016, search-and-rescue missions led by member states in the Mediterranean have been replaced with deals supporting coast guard agencies in north Africa. Of course, that is not news to Fine Gael, whose MEPs voted against a move to enhance search-and-rescue operations for migrants in 2019.

People attempting the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean are intercepted by these agencies and often end up in detention centres in appalling conditions, for example, in Libya. Facilitating torture and human rights abuses in third countries is not a policy we, or anyone in this House, should stand over. A good EU asylum law should instead include safe and legal routes to Europe and properly resourced search-and-rescue missions. The priority should be stopping the deaths at sea, investing in better asylum systems and treating people humanely. Instead, we are looking at a system where many asylum seekers will be put through fast-track border systems and treated as de facto criminals, with their right to claim asylum seriously undermined.

People processed in this way all across Europe, including children and families, will be sent to detention centres for 12 weeks. There will be no right to legal aid and, in fact, no right to even claim they have reached the EU. The Minister has stated that Ireland will not introduce detention centres, but the legal basis will be there to facilitate them. We have had no clarity on a whole range of issues such as where these centres will be located and whether children will be entitled to attend school. These are not questions we should still have and the ambiguity is concerning.

I wish to address the dehumanising language that has become normal when discussing migration. Asylum seekers are referred to as "burdens" or problems to be solved. They are not. They are human beings who deserve to be treated with compassion and decency. This should be the case regardless of whether their claims are successful.

Not everything in this pact is bad. There are some measures that we should opt into. For example, the reception conditions directive would provide minimum agreed standards of accommodation so that asylum seekers would not sleep rough. The solidarity mechanism would ensure co-operation across member states so that individual member states on the borders of Europe would not be left to deal with large numbers of arrivals in isolation. The Eurodac regulation is largely welcome in terms of information sharing, but there needs to be clarification around serious data protection concerns. For example, if the fingerprints of a six-year-old refugee are taken for the child's safety and to ensure the child is not being trafficked, we need to know how long the fingerprints will remain on the database. There are some sensible and necessary aspects to this pact, but they are grouped with regulations that are designed to cause absolute misery to incredibly vulnerable people who arrive on our shores.

We in this country are in a unique position. We do not have to opt into every measure, so it is bizarre that the Government is doing so. Adopting this pact in full sends the wrong message globally. It sends a message that we are willing to downgrade the right to claim asylum and to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses when it suits us. That is not a message that the Social Democrats can stand over and, for that reason, we will be voting against the migration pact.

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