Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome the opportunity to make a contribution to this important debate and to speak in favour of the motion. This debate offers the House the opportunity to speak not only on the detail of the pact itself but on the issue of migration more widely.

EU migration is a shared European challenge that requires shared European solutions. EU agreement on the pact demonstrates that we stand strong together in ensuring that our asylum systems are cohesive, fair and efficient and that we work together on protecting our borders, tackling secondary movement and demonstrating solidarity to the front-line states most acutely affected by irregular migration. To those who might seek to portray this as being a particular problem in Ireland, over the past number of evenings I watched the international news. Sky News had a number of reports on the migration challenge, not just in the UK but globally. It reported on people crossing the Mexican-United States border, different parts of the European Union, including Italy, and the challenge the UK faces with migrants coming across the Channel from France.

The truth is that this challenge will be here for quite some time because of the underlying reasons that migration is happening, whether that be famine, climate change, which is devastating some countries, persecution or countries where human rights are constantly being trampled on. This is going to be an ongoing challenge and that is why the kinds of reforms that the Minister for Justice has brought forward are so important and will make a real difference in the period ahead.

The pact will harmonise asylum procedures and processes across the European Union. It will speed up the processing of asylum applications so that people in need of our protection get it and those who do not are returned. That is where I believe the centre ground is and where the overall majority of Irish people are in their thinking about the issue of migration. It will oblige states to conduct enhanced screening and security checks on those arriving at borders and will reduce irregular secondary movements of asylum seekers, something we know will be particularly beneficial for Ireland given our geographic location.

There are some in this House who believe we can go it alone when it comes to migration. They believe we can address the issues without interacting with the European Union and our wider European partners. This is a fallacy. In other countries, we have seen what has happened when a go-it-alone approach on migration has been taken. It simply does not work and will not work in the future, given the complexity of the issue and interdependencies that exist between countries. We need to work with our European partners to address what is a European problem. As I said, it is in fact a global problem.

On migration more widely, as Minister for Finance I have to acknowledge without fear of contradiction that legal migration into Ireland plays an enormously positive role in the Irish economy. Economic migration boosts the number of working age people, which will prove to be even more critical as our population ages over the period ahead. Migrant workers bring much-needed skills and experience across all sectors of the economy, in particular in sectors like healthcare and construction. Legal migration is hugely positive for Ireland. Just last weekend, Deputy Ó Laoghaire and I attended an event in Cork, where Indian nurses hosted a summer fest event in St. Finbarr's Hurling and Football Club. There were hundreds of Indian nurses and other healthcare professionals from India without whom we simply would not be able to provide healthcare to the people of Cork and beyond. I chatted with the deputy general secretary of the INMO who said there are over 13,000 Indian nurses registered in Ireland. If I am not mistaken, that is out of a total population of registered nurses of between 40,000 and 50,000. It is a significant number overall. Vital public services would not be provided were it not for legal migration.

We know the diversity in the workplace at the moment. It is hugely positive. It enriches the workplace environment and allows people to experience cultures they otherwise would not come into contact with. I recently visited a multinational company in Cork which has thousands of employees, and 47% of its workers are Irish. It has over a hundred nationalities represented in its workforce. That, too, is hugely positive. The Irish economy would not be the success story it is today were it not for legal migration.

In light of the current labour market, which is tight in Ireland, we have welcomed high numbers of people from across the world to meet the demand for skills in critically important sectors, which I have touched on. This is achieved through our successful employment permit and visa system. This system maximises the benefits of economic migration while minimising the risk of disrupting the labour market by facilitating the recruitment of non-EEA nationals to fill skills and labour gaps for the benefit of our economy overall. In the past two years alone, almost 125,000 non-Irish nationals have found work in Ireland, accounting for over 60% of total employment growth during this time. These workers are critically important to our economic success and the delivery of important public services.

Of course, we need rules and to apply them consistently, fairly and, as colleagues have said on a number of occasions, firmly. If we truly believe that a rules-based system is needed for migration, then we need to work with our European colleagues. There is simply no other credible way. If we choose to be an outlier in Europe, then it follows that we will not receive co-operation from other countries. We will go it alone in that instance.

As my colleague said at the outset of this debate, we have given careful consideration to this and have concluded without doubt that it is right for Ireland to opt into this pact. We cannot address some of the issues surrounding migration on our own. It would be foolish to think that we can. We have to work together with our EU colleagues and other member states to ensure that those issues are addressed collectively.

I acknowledge the work of the Minister for Justice. The improvements which have been introduced to the existing system include doubling the number of staff in international protection and tripling the number of decisions, with further increases planned for this year and beyond. Fast-track processes have now been introduced for ten safe countries of origin, including for people who have received protection elsewhere in Europe and people from the country that provides the highest number of applicants in the previous quarter, which, as we know, is Nigeria.

We have suspended visa-free travel for certain refugees and added more countries to the visa required list. Over 3,000 doorstop operations on flights which pose a risk of irregular migration have taken place to the end of May this year. Gardaí have prosecuted over 100 people this year alone for arriving without appropriate documentation, with a significant number having been imprisoned. Fines on carriers will be increased from the current maximum of €3,000 to €5,000 to ensure passengers have the correct documentation. Deportation orders issued in the current year are up 83% on the same period last year, to 14 June. There are 100 gardaí being freed up from back office roles to support immigration enforcement activities.

They are just some of the steps that have been taken so far to improve and, in many respects, right-size the system due to the dramatic acceleration we have experienced in the past number of years in terms of international protection applicants arriving in Ireland. The system is being improved. The resources are being provided. All of that will not achieve the desired goal if we seek to adopt an isolationist approach that says Ireland can do it all on its own. We cannot, and that is why signing up to the EU asylum and migration pact is the right decision for Ireland.

See this speech in context