Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I will not support the pact. It writes a broken system into law. It disregards the humanity of people fleeing war and persecution. It weakens our humanity by treating people who need help with detention and punishment. It reinforces the false idea we have a refugee crisis and not a crisis in how we run our economies, societies and international system.

We do not have refugee crisis. We have a crisis in how we run and fund our State. This crisis is seen in housing, the rental sector, homelessness, healthcare, mental health services and education. The crisis has not developed since 2022 but has been decades in the making. People fleeing war and persecution are not a crisis. The failure of our State to provide basic functioning services is a crisis and we are all caught up in it.

The reason for the crisis is simple but it is complicated in many ways. Successive Governments have built an economy that benefits the very wealthy and big business at the expense of a functioning state for the majority of people. We refuse to tax wealth at a rate that could provide a fully functioning State. Ireland sits 27th in Europe for employers' contributions to social insurance and employers' PRSI. It is 44% of the European average. We have one of the lowest corporation taxes. Our taxes on capital are less than half those of Germany and the UK and less than one third of those of France. The result of this is that our State spending measured as a percentage of GDP is 32% less than the next lowest EU country and 57% less than the EU average.

Successive Governments in Ireland have provided low taxes for the wealthy, failing the services for everyone else. This is what direct provision was and is about. We built a system that was not fit for purpose, just like in housing, health and education, because successive Governments will not tax the wealthy like a normal EU country and therefore cannot fund a functioning service.

The Irish Refugee Council has called direct provision "State sanctioned child poverty" and "a chapter in Ireland's long and dark history of institutional living". This system was in place when the number of people seeking international protection began to rise in 2022. The foundations were completely rotten. Now we find out that citizens in direct provision are being pushed out to nothing. They have been given the date of 5 July to leave direct provision, but to go where? This is just more immiseration for people fleeing war and persecution without any additional funding or services for communities already dealing with failing public services.

The more than 2,000 IPAS applicants currently living on our streets is the result of sticking with policies the Government was told did not work. This pact has the same problem. The current EU policy is not working. I cannot vote for a new policy built on an already failing system. Research for the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, ECRE, showed that this will provide for worse quality processing for applicants, less right to appeal, a heavy reliance on detention and lower standards of care and that it is a failure to address the issues that cause onward movement and has so many holes and derogations in it that there are real questions on how it can function properly. To quote the ECRE:

the Commission has gone ahead with these ideas even [though] they significantly undermine EU law as a whole and vastly complicate the Commission's own job of monitoring compliance and defending the Treaties.

The pact does not address the issues facing border countries, save people from drowning in the Mediterranean, address the living conditions of refugees or asylum seekers in Europe or address the declining standards of living across an EU that since 2008 has stood over bank guarantees, extortionate debt deals, government spending limits and austerity. Most important, it does not address the problems that make people leave their homes and come to Europe, such as the wars EU countries participate in and fund in the global south, our protectionist trade deals, extortionate debt or our contribution to the climate crisis. This is not a simpler or better process. It is just a less safe one and will ultimately see more people dead in the Mediterranean and on Europe's borders because it does not address the real causes of this issue. Europe should not repeat its mistakes and build a policy on top of a system that has already failed. We need a humane policy that is state-led and properly funded and respects the needs of people fleeing war and persecution and the need for European countries, including this country, to provide a decent standard of life for everyone who lives in them.

Will people stop calling human beings "returns"? It is like returning an empty bottle to a machine. We are talking about people who are declined status in Ireland and then asking they be deported. They are not returns.

I will not be supporting this pact.

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