David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If a jumbo jet with 500 people were to crash in the Atlantic Ocean tonight and all the passengers drowned, it would make headline news tomorrow. Last year, the equivalent of six jumbo jets full of people drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to cross into Europe. These were desperate people getting on coffin ships. We had this happen in our own history. Some 186,000 people tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea last year. These were desperate people fleeing from war, conflict, climate change, famine and corruption. You name it, we can only dream in our worst nightmare of the situations these people are coming from.

I spent four years working in this area. There was not a day nor an hour when there was not an issue. Someone would be coming at me from one side saying I was not doing enough for these people and that I should be doing an awful lot more. Others came and said these people should not be here at all and we were taking in too many. These people arrive here, though, and we can see how desperate they are. So many risk their lives every year. The figures I referred to were just for last year, but the same has happened in other years. What are we to do when these people arrive here? We are obliged under international law to offer them accommodation and shelter and to process their applications if they look for asylum. This is what we are obliged to do. I must say that the officials I dealt with did their very best, but because of the state of our world, people keep on coming.

When I was working in this area, we were dealing with a conflict in Syria. We forget that country and do not mention it too much now, but there are still millions of people displaced from Syria. We talk about Gaza, where the situation is an abomination now. We talk about Ukraine as well. Very few people are talking about what is happening in Sudan and different parts of Africa. Again, if people were to take the time to read about, look at and study what is happening in those areas, they would see that it is absolutely awful and shocking. A couple of thousand people have come to this country, now, and we have people saying, "Ireland is full". If it were not for the impact of our Famine, we would probably at this stage have a population of 30 million or 40 million people living on this island if we had grown at the same rate as comparable countries in Europe. We have, instead, 5 million people. There is plenty of space here.

We also have people contacting us looking for workers. Employers ring me and all of us up because they want visas for workers to come here. I think the figure last year was 43,000. One of the frustrating issues for me at the time was the fact that Europe did not have a single policy or a single voice on migration. Now, this pact is giving it that. There is talk about a common asylum system, responsibility and solidarity, enhanced border management, efficient asylum procedures, return procedures, crisis preparedness and response, integration and support, tackling irregular migration, monitoring and enforcement and an implementation plan. This migration pact is about comprehensive reform.

There is a lot in it that is positive and that we can work together on. There are people saying that perhaps it will reduce the rights of migrants to seek asylum, while others are saying it will increase the numbers. On one side the Government is being criticised for not doing enough, while on the other it is being criticised for doing too much. I think this pact, which has taken a long time to negotiate across Europe, strikes a balance in the centre that we need. However, until Europe and the developed world start looking at the causes of migration and what is forcing desperate people to leave parts of Africa and Asia and deal with these factors, this is going to continue. This will be the case no matter what we do.

President Trump tried to build a wall, but it did not work. Britain had Brexit, but it did not work. Italy put in Prime Minister Meloni, but it did not work. They will keep on coming, as our people left here when they had to do so in the last century. They ended up in Canada, the United States, and in other places where they were not treated very well at the time and where an awful lot of them died. We have this in our DNA too. This pact is a way forward. Europe must work together as we cannot do it on our own. No country can deal with this issue on its own. We must work together on it. We must get clear thinking on it. We must keep a humanitarian approach because we are dealing with desperate people.

One of the ironies is that people sometimes say we cannot bring people here because we cannot treat them well. Very often the people who come here come from places we could only think about in our worst nightmares, and even then it could not happen. We could not imagine how awful things are. Some people have seen their whole family butchered and killed and they have escaped with their lives, with just the clothes on their back. This is complex. I could probably talk about it at length. Many of us could go on and on about it. This is a way forward. I support the pact. I also support the Minister in her work on it.

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