Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

People Before Profit will be opposing the Government motion on the migration and asylum impact and the pact itself, not for the reasons that some in this House may put forward but because we believe the European Union and, sadly, our own Government are beginning to make concessions to anti-immigrant hysteria and to the scapegoating of immigrants by the far right in a dangerous way that is not prompted by a desire for a more humane system but, in fact, is going to result in a less humane and less fair system of international protection and asylum.

The criticisms of the migration pact by those who are genuinely concerned with human rights and giving people a fair hearing have been well articulated and I am sure the Minister is more than familiar with them. What we are actually going to see is, for example, fast-track approaches dealing with people who come from so-called safe countries. If you take even the most cursory look at countries that have been designated - and I have just spent my time looking at them as I was listening to the debate - in almost all the countries that have been designated as so-called safe countries, when you look at what human rights organisations are saying about those countries, you see very serious problems indeed. This would lead one to understand immediately that there would be very legitimate reasons for people fleeing those countries. I looked, for example, at the Amnesty report on Algeria, which has been designated a safe country. What do you see in recent times? You see journalists arrested and detained, human rights organisations shut down, opposition political parties shut down and banned, people being arrested and so on. Of course, there would be good reasons people might flee countries like that. The Minister can go through the list of all of them.

What the new pact will also mean is people who are lodging appeals against decisions can actually be deported while they are awaiting appeals, as well as legal grounds for greater levels of detention of people making asylum applications. There are major problems but all of this is underpinned by our own Government and the European establishment leaning into the scare tactics and hysteria being whipped up by the right and the far right. They are essentially adopting Tory tactics. It surely should be something of a lesson to an Irish Government, when one looks at the Tory Government that has relied on the scapegoating and attacking of immigrants, that it is about to be swept out of power because everybody in Britain finally understood that all these attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers were the Tories' desperate attempts to deflect attention away from the real issues that people have a right to be angry about, that is, on the cost of living, the housing crisis, the lack of public services and so on. Instead of addressing those issues, however, we scapegoat vulnerable people who are fleeing war, persecution and oppression or who are just looking for a better life.

What really worries me about Government interventions, and indeed some of the Opposition interventions, is that language of "a burden", suggesting that human beings - and that is what we are talking about, human beings - are somehow a burden. The reality is that human beings generate all of the wealth and richness of our society. The vast majority of human beings, wherever they are from or whatever colour or creed they are, enrich our society. They make it better. They add to our society economically and culturally. Anybody who thinks there is some sort of ideal Irish purity should just think about it for a little while. When you go back to the 1950s, 1940s and 1930s in this country, when masses of people were leaving the country, did reducing the population of this country make it better? No - it made it poorer and worse and, of course, it was a period characterised by the Magdalen laundries, the industrial schools, the shocking treatment of women and of children who were not born in supposedly legitimate family relations, and all of this horrible stuff.

There is the idea that Ireland is full. I mean, it is ridiculous. There were 8 million people in this country at the beginning of the 19th century. Unless people are going to suggest that the Famine enforced on the Irish population by the British Government, which halved the population, was somehow a necessary thing to reduce the population - which I do not think any sane person would say - the reality is the reduction of our population led us to being a much poorer country. Decades and generations of emigration made this country a poorer place at every single level. If you even look at the basic thing of population density, the Netherlands is two thirds the size of this country and it has a population - I was just looking at this before the debate - of 17 million. Similarly, Switzerland, which is less than two thirds the size of this country, has a population of 8.7 million. These are wealthy countries. The idea that low population density is somehow good economically is simply not true.

If you look at the tax contribution of immigrants in this country and if you look at our health services, there are 51,000 non-EU citizens working in our health services at the moment. There are 36,000 working in information and communication; 24,000 in industry; 24,000 in hospitality; 20,000 in the professional and scientific sectors; 17,000 in wholesale and retail; 13,000 in administrative services; 11,000 in financial services; and 34,000 in other areas like agriculture and so on. Our economy would literally collapse without the contribution of immigrants. Surely we should know that as a country that helped build other countries. We faced the same racist scapegoating that the far right and now, sadly, our own Government are echoing when we went to those countries. The divide-and-rule tactics that were used by successive Tory and British Governments against Irish immigrants were actually a weapon to divide the British working class and distract from their own failings to provide things for ordinary working people in Britain. The Irish and black people were used as scapegoats, and now European leaders and the Government are leaning into it.

The Minister, Deputy Roderic O'Gorman, is shaking his head. I ask him to look at the amount of measures that have been taken in the last few weeks, facing into an election, which were all directed at sending signals that the Government is getting tough on immigration, that is a burden that has to be addressed and so on. The problem in this country is not immigrants; the problem is the failure of successive Governments to address the housing and accommodation crisis, to properly resource and staff our health service, to address the problem of the lack of GPs and so on, and critically, to distribute the enormous wealth that exists in this country, where 10% of the population owns 57% of the wealth. Ireland has never been richer but nor has it ever been more unequal in terms of the concentration of wealth. We have more than enough resources and wealth to solve our problems.

When you talk to people, the vast majority of people in this country are absolutely not racist. They are welcoming, decent people but they are frustrated about the lack of GP services, the fact that their daughter or son has been on a housing waiting list for ten or 15 years, or that they go into the emergency department and find they are on trolleys for hours or even days. They are angry about that but of course, some people want to suggest it is immigrants when in fact, it is immigrants we need. We have labour and skills shortages in almost every area. We are lacking taxi drivers - I was listening to it on the radio today. We are lacking bus drivers, and people in retail, the health service and construction. There is an idea that Ireland is full but immigrants will not do anything other than help us solve the problems that need to be solved as a matter of urgency. That is the truth we should be telling people and Government should be acknowledging its failure to address those things but not leaning into the scapegoating of immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants or whatever they might be.

Human beings enrich our society. They make it better and they are not a drain. We need people. Just as the world benefited from Irish people going to countries all over the world, we benefit from immigrants. We should not scapegoat them and we should reject the attempt by the European Union and our Government to do it. Let us address the real problems and admit our responsibility for failing to solve those problems until now.

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