Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I will start by distinguishing something that is not distinguished enough in public discourse, namely, the difference between immigration and migration. Very often, when I deal with people on these issues, they do not necessarily make that distinction. Immigration, or people who come here to work, live and contribute to our society at lots of different levels, includes people we absolutely need. They keep our hospitals running and our hotels, restaurants and communities busy. At a time when we have full employment in this country, thank God, we are very lucky to have communities that are willing to come and work here as part of an immigration process complete with visas, permissions, etc. Some of them are European Union citizens. Many of them are from outside the European Union but wherever they come from, when they come here to work in our bars, restaurants and, particularly, hospitals, in home healthcare services, in assistance services at all kinds of different levels and in our schools, we are so lucky to have those people. That is the immigration system.

Parallel with that is the migration system. This includes people who probably have not come here by choice necessarily. They have come here because of some upheaval in their own countries or some situation that makes it dangerous, unpalatable or even impossible for them to live where they have come from. They very often come from war-torn areas, or from communities where there is massive discrimination against them because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender. As part of that migration system, they come here seeking international protection. They are the people who most people see as immigrants, when in fact the category is much wider than that. They are people who come here seeking the protection of Ireland.

The irony is that we as Irish people have benefited from similar protection across the world for centuries. Everybody in this Chamber will have family members who live in other countries, be it the United States, or the far side of the world in places such as New Zealand and Australia, European countries and across the world. They live there because they went there seeking a better life or, in some instances, they went there seeking protection because situations in this country were unpalatable, for a variety of reasons, over the past 150 to 200 years. They were brought into those communities as guests and given the protection of those communities. It is a consequence of our success as a country that the duty now falls to us to give that temporary, and maybe sometimes longer term or even permanent, protection to people who are in exactly the same place our forefathers were at the time of the Famine and persecution in this country when they went abroad. The role now falls to us to look after those people who come here.

The difference now is that we benefit from a very substantial and complex, but also comprehensive, international rules-based system for how we deal with people who come here. That is the international protection system that manages those people who come here seeking what we used to call asylum and is now known as international protection. They come here and there are criteria they must meet to be allowed to stay here. If they stay here, it is technically, certainly initially, on a temporary basis until such time as they are in a position to return to their countries.

Equally, we all recognise that for somebody who comes here, receives international protection, lives and works in this country or who might be born in this country if their parents were in that situation and has gone through school in this country, it does not always make sense for them to return to the country from which their family came.

What is most important is that we use that international rules-based system to process those applicants and, most importantly, do so in a swift way. This has not been the case for a long number of years. I am sure the Minister will acknowledge that he benefits from the foresight of his predecessor as Minister, Deputy McEntee, who massively increased the number of staff available in the international protection office such that those applications that were taking years to process a few short years ago are now being reduced to terms of months. This is exactly as it should be. That is fair not just to the people who live in this country and are entitled to have certainty for those coming in seeking international protection but, perhaps more importantly, to those seeking international protection. It is not fair for people to come here from a war-torn country or a place where they were being persecuted only to be told they must wait years for a decision about whether they can stay, leaving them in a limbo where, for a long time, they could not work, though now they can after six months. It leaves them in a situation where their future is totally uncertain. That is not fair. That is why we need to accelerate the processing of international protection applications and give people clarity on the decisions regarding whether or not they can stay here for the duration of that persecution or the instability in their home country.

While they are waiting for that process, we have obligations not to ignore or abandon them but instead to ensure they have safe places to live. That is what the international protection accommodation service is for. That is probably the system that has created most controversy with people. I say this with respect to all those working in this area. It is a programme that has been mismanaged. It has been particularly mismanaged from a public information perspective. We have been far too afraid to be honest with communities around this country and to be up front with them in saying, "Here is what we are planning to do. Tell us what you think. Tell us what you think the downsides are. Tell us what you think the pitfalls are. Tell us why you think it's a good idea or a bad idea or whatever it is." The reality is that those sitting in a Department in Dublin cannot know every corner of the country and every community. They cannot know if the Department purchased a hotel in an area where that is the only place where tourists can stay. They cannot know the effect that will have on the local community. There has been far too much centralised paternalism in Dublin in terms of being honest with communities, asking them and talking to them about what is proposed. Fundamentally, Irish people are genuine, generous and welcoming people. That is our history and there is ample evidence to support the fact that Irish people are happy to open their doors to communities who come here with genuine issues in their home countries, to accommodate and look after them and let them form part of our communities for however long it is they must be here. What has happened, however, is that those communities have been left in the dark. They hear rumours that an IPAS centre is going in here, there are X number of people coming in here and they are coming from a totally different background - they might be from a different religion or whatever it is. This breeds mistrust - mistrust between them and the Government but also mistrust between them and the innocent people who are fleeing persecution who come to live in their communities. Let us be honest with the Irish people and talk to them about what is actually happening.

Every Member of this House will have had a situation in their constituency where a rumour goes around, be it founded or unfounded, that some centre is going in here. In that context, we as representatives need to be honest with people in our communities and constituencies. We need to be honest about what the actual effect of a community like that coming into our constituency is. The complaints that are often made to me are that people are in fear. They fear that if a community of single men is moved into an area, they would not be able to let their daughters out. I do not think those people are racist, but I do think they are ill-informed. Every statistic will show that the vast majority of people charged with sexual crimes in this country are Irish - even in terms of the proportion of the population that are Irish. The incidence of crimes involving international protection applicants is minimal compared with those involving Irish people. Let us be clear about that. It is the gap of information that allows it to be filled by people with nefarious intent with lies just like that.

The other concerns mentioned to me relate to healthcare. It is a case of, "We cannot get a date with our GP. We cannot get into a GP's surgery in the local area so when these extra 50 or 100 people come into our community, where are they going to get healthcare?" That is a legitimate concern. The Minister and I have an IPAS centre between our constituencies or in his constituency and at the edge of mine. The number of people who will fit into that will need healthcare. One of the things I have said repeatedly to the Department is that we need to provide on-site healthcare for those people. We cannot expect local GP services to absorb them. They do not do so in any event because they do not have the capacity. Let us deal with legitimate concerns like that and actually address them with practical solutions.

The other issue people raise is education. When children are coming into IPAS centres, where are they going to continue their education? We cannot abandon them. They must continue to have education, if only to equip them for the temporary situation they might be in. That duty falls on local schools. Teachers tell me, "I am already up to my gills dealing with the 20 or 30 students I have in my class. I cannot take in six students who might not have English. I cannot deal with the extra resource implications of that." I understand what those teachers are saying and I understand what the parents of the children in those classes are saying. Let us provide a practical solution for those legitimate concerns about the accommodation of international protection applicants. Let us say we will provide dedicated educational opportunity for those people on site if they have no English or, where they go into the local school, let us provide that school with the additional resources that are needed.

It is not okay to abandon this. It is not okay to leave an information vacuum. It is not okay to not be honest with the communities we represent. Let us trust them to acknowledge the duty we have as a wealthy First World country. Let us trust them, with the generosity we know they have, with the real information about what is happening and the consequent resource applications that are required.

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