Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Government has worked day and night to put migration at the heart of politics and debate in recent months. It is a distraction from its failures of the housing crisis, the health crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the crisis in disability services and supports.

A person said to me recently that they feel the Government has made them racist because they are fighting for services for their family and children and this Government is failing them. What happens then is that, unfortunately, vulnerable people are pitted against vulnerable people, but they should not be because they should be pitted against this Government. It is shameful scapegoating and the Government's complete failure to manage the asylum process was echoed by one of its own TDs earlier who accepted the absolute mess the Government has made of this. On the one hand the Government is paying to give people tents because they have nowhere to go and then a day or two later coming in with bulldozers to rip the tents down, buses to take people away and erecting fences. This is complete hypocrisy. People are looking at these scenes on their televisions every night of the week and want to know what is happening. What is happening is that this Government has failed in its policy and that is why things like this are happening.

What the Government is doing now will tie the hands of future governments and the Irish people. It is making a decision that will affect every Irish Government going forward. The Government is opting Ireland in completely unnecessarily to a pact that undermines the mandate the Irish people gave to the Nice and Lisbon referendums and fundamentally flies in the face of our own deeply felt commitment to sovereignty.

Irish republicans have long stood for those people who came here. Thomas Davis once said, "It is not blood that makes you Irish but a willingness to be part of the Irish Nation." Nurses and doctors who work long days, nights and weekends in our hospitals; cleaners who keep our hospitals and buildings clean; those who keep our roads in working order; and childcare workers who cherish and nurture our children are all part of the Irish nation and should be respected. We have seen brilliant successes of Irish men and women in sport both nationally and internationally. Some of these people were born here and others have made Ireland their home. They represent us with pride and we are proud of them.

Yet, this Government will now allow the European Union to decide when people can work here, how much they need to survive and whether they will be detained in detention camps of up to 30,000 people. Where is the humanity in that? While Irish republicans have stood with those who have made Ireland their home, we have also stood with those who have gone to the four corners of this world to make their homes - men and women who had to leave this country, this State, to get on boats and aeroplanes. People who said goodbye to their families and friends. They built roads in England, homes in America and schools in Canada. They taught in Dubai and are still doing so. They are working in the mines of Australia. They worked in the same way as so many do here now. They were homesick and often cast aside. They were often made to feel unwanted. Like no other nation on earth, we should know what it means to be downtrodden, oppressed and stigmatised. Irish people had to endure Paddy Irishman jokes and jibes in every pub and factory from America to England and back again. They saw signs on doors, as my father did when he was in England, that said: "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish." My own family experienced this, particularly uncles and aunts who also had to travel to work right across the world. They built lives in other places and we must support people who work hard to build lives here.

We are on the cusp of change and change will mean a government that does not use migration to mask its own failings. Change is a government that cares about ordinary people and does not try to force them to punch down. The Government is barrelling headfirst into the hands of trying to prevent change. This Government is trying to sign away our sovereignty. The Government's decision will affect us long into the future. It is due to this Government's failing that it is signing up to this EU pact.

It is not just Sinn Féin or the Opposition saying this. A total of 160 civil society organisations oppose the pact, including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Save the Children and many more. The Government should not just take our word that it is the wrong thing to do to have one vote on seven different sections. The Minister is wrong and the Government still has time to change its mind and I ask it to do so.

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