Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this debate on the EU migration and asylum pact. As we know, inward migration has become central to the political discourse and debate in Ireland particularly in last year. The truth is that strongly-held views on immigration are no longer only coming from people of one political persuasion. The discussion has become very much mainstream. Any Government that is doing its job needs to respond to that in a responsible way by addressing myths, bias and fears and by facing down discrimination and at times, downright racism. It needs to invest in capacity building and new accommodation solutions. It needs to ensure a fair but also efficient decision-making process that can make decisions between people who are generally vulnerable and at risk of persecution and people who are not. It has to prioritise scarce resources for those who most need them and work with international partners to address what is an international problem shared across this continent and many others.

The Government is doing all of these things through the leadership of the Ministers, Deputies McEntee and O'Gorman. Most importantly though, given the capacity pressures Ireland has been experiencing and the tension that is being created as a result, we must try to set the tone for how this debate on migration is conducted. The coarseness of language sometimes used in the debate needs to be counterbalanced. Many have noted tonight that inward migration has been very good for Ireland from the point of view of economics, education, and healthcare and also from the perspective of social well-being. Does anybody seriously think that the big multinationals that Deputy Barry is so quick to criticise almost every time he speaks here, such as Google, Dell, Apple, Microsoft, Eli Lilly and Meta, would have invested as heavily in Ireland as they have done if they were not able to put international teams in here? Google headquarters in Dublin has 73 different nationalities working there. In Deputy Barry's constituency, Apple has around 90 different nationalities working there. Ireland has become a place where the international community comes together to do global business. That has been very good for Ireland on many levels.

Outward migration is also embedded in the Irish story. We are a migrant people globally and we should not forget this when we have these debates. That said, many of the pressures we face today from a capacity perspective will not be solved by kind words or focusing solely on the supply side in the context of accommodation, in particular. We need to be realistic and we need to understand what is actually happening in the world today. This is not primarily about Ireland; it is about what is happening in other parts of the world that is now impacting our own country. Vast numbers of people are on the move internationally, many of whom are seeking international protection from war, conflict and persecution. There are many who are simply seeking economic opportunity and understandably so. There are 125 million people today who are displaced from their homes. Many of them live in refugee camps and many others are on the move within or across borders. Every country in the democratic world today is discussing how to deal with the scale of migration that is currently happening and also predicted for the future in the context of the pressures that conflict, climate and lack of economic opportunity will drive.

We have a choice here. Do we try to deal with the scale of this challenge on our own in isolation or do we try to do it with friends and partners within the European Union? As with all the big international challenges, a collective approach protects the small countries. Ireland has been protected on many occasions by that EU that many of the Members opposite have chosen to try to demonise this evening. People quickly forget how we were protected by France and Germany and many others, through the Covid years. People forget very quickly how the European Commission ensured that small countries like Ireland got Covid vaccines rather than them only flowing into the bigger and more powerful countries. People quickly forget how this country has been transformed on the back of EU membership, working in a Common Market across the European Union through my lifetime and the lifetime of many in this House.

Ireland displayed a very real role in the negotiation and design of this EU migration and asylum pact, just like it has done on other big policies that we have shared and agreed within the European Union. It is not perfect, but there is no perfect solution when it comes to trying to deal with the challenge and scale of migration we are seeing today. This represents a significant improvement in terms of the certainty and predictability that it will bring for the future. It will make changes like, for example, a new asylum procedures regulation. For the first time, this delivers a common procedure for international protection applicants across the EU. In other words, every country is going to do the same thing. That will bring a consistency of approach that will be hugely valuable for a country like ours. The procedure contains four elements. There is a mandatory borders procedure. This means that people who come here and may have destroyed documentation or are seen as high risk for a number of reasons, will be taken to a separate designated location for their applications to be processed. There will be an accelerated procedure for people who have come from safe countries of origin, so that we can make decisions with a turnaround time of no more than three months. There will be an inadmissibility procedure in the case of people who have already been granted asylum somewhere else in the European Union but have chosen to move on and come to Ireland. A decision will be made within two months for that category of person. Let us not forget that the majority of people who come to Ireland come through other countries first, whether that is the UK or other EU countries. There will be a so-called ordinary procedure, which is what we do for most applications today, whereby a decision will be required within six months. Of course, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the Government are putting the resources in place to try to get there, regardless of this migration pact.

There will also be an asylum and migration management regulation. This will replace the Dublin III regulation. It will reduce timeframes for determining which member state is responsible for processing an application. If people come to Ireland via other EU countries, we will now have a system that actually works to be able to return them to the EU country to which they first arrived. This will be hugely valuable to Ireland but we cannot avail of it if we do not opt into this pact.

There will be a new solidarity mechanism, which many people have exaggerated the effect of. I encourage people to inform themselves in terms of what Ireland is actually being asked to do, which is pretty modest, in the bigger scheme of things. The choice is clear. On the one hand, isolation, going it alone, taking all the risk that comes from that when we know that our closest neighbour, with all of its resources, population and influence has been unable to manage the migration question and it now dominates politics there. On the other hand, we can choose to try to do this as a collective within the European Union - after two or three years of negotiation which we have been involved in - to try to make sure that we have a common standard with realism across the European Union.

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