Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)

I completely welcome the debate. I am conscious it could be happening in a very different context, given how fortunate we were that the horrors we saw too viscerally in Drogheda last week did not materialise in an outcome that would have been most devastating with a loss of life. It was a scenario, however, where a person with hatred in their soul placed petrol on stairs. You cannot imagine any other outcome was intended but death and loss of life that would have included children and a baby of just 20 days.

I am also conscious of the experience of a child who was viciously assaulted in Citywest a couple of weeks ago. All of us shook with absolute horror and revulsion at the failures of the State that led to that incident. I cannot imagine the mental gymnastics it would take for people to see in that incident a motivation to assault gardaí and burn fires in the hope of getting into a building, where more children were being terrified to the point where many could not get to school. That is the context in which we are having this debate. The tensions, level of rage and misdirection of anger towards migrants are all palpable. When we have a debate, and use our position and voice, it is incumbent on us to do so in a tone that is measured, with facts that are accurate, and to understand that the message we may intend to set out can often be redirected, manipulated and misconstrued by actors who are very purposely trying to set terror in the hearts of people who came here in search of sanctuary.

I will talk about the comments made by the Minister, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan. There were a couple of inaccuracies in his statement. The Minister told the House that the appeals process is getting faster but his own Department gave me a response to a parliamentary question that shows that is not the case. In fact, it is the opposite. The median waiting time has increased from ten months to nearly 13 months this year, up to the end of September. The Minister is saying one thing but the opposite is true. He also made a charge that has been repeated by any number of Government backbenchers and that Ministers have taken to the media over the last six months: "My overall strategy for the international protection process, aimed at making more and faster decisions, is working. From the beginning of my tenure as Minister [for justice], applications for asylum have decreased by [approximately] 40%." Is the Minister seriously trying to tell me that because he tweets about deportation flights, somebody in some far-off location, who is considering coming here to seek asylum, will say that the Minister has now tweeted so they will not come here? He should pull the other one because it is just a joke that continues to be allowed to percolate.

I will talk a little bit about the Tánaiste's comments. As I engage with this debate, because we want it to be reasonable and have asked for it to be facts-based, we should use the Tánaiste's own lines and words and deconstruct them as we go. He said that people on the left are trying to shut down the debate. That is far from the case. We just understand the stakes and that it needs to be facts-based when we debate. The Tánaiste said that those of us who advocate for compassion, fairness and a facts-based discussion, are trying to shut down debate. What he actually means is we are refusing to nod along to misinformation. There has been no shortage of debate, be it in the media, the House or the committee chamber. We looked at the international protection Bill 2025 for over seven hours without much in the way of Government contribution, and nothing in the way of actual scrutiny, because the heads of Bill are still not even in place for most of the outstanding issues. When the Tánaiste says the debate is being shut down, he is not defending free speech. He is defending poor speech, speech that confuses facts, blames the wrong people and hides his own failures. That is the issue here because far-right actors and, believe me, there are far-right actors, do not win when they get the type of people who would like to see impositions of power. They do not win electoral seats. They win when nice middle-class people, with nice respectable-looking suits, start wearing their clothes and echoing their calls. That is when they win and that is what we are seeing too often.

The Tánaiste said, "migration numbers are too high". This line is everywhere. It is in interviews, briefings and even Cabinet notes but it does not stand up to a single piece of data. The Central Statistics Office tells us that immigration to Ireland actually fell by 16% in the year to April 2025. A total of 125,000 people came to Ireland and 65,000 people left. That is a net migration of 59,700, which should be a perfectly manageable number for a country of 5.46 million people. What is more, half of those arrivals were aged between 25 and 44, who are working-age adults filling vital gaps in the labour market. When the Tánaiste said that numbers are too high, he is not describing reality. He is trying to turn a story of economic growth and workforce needs into one of threat and crisis potentially because his back is against the wall.

The Minister, Tánaiste and several others have said that 80% of asylum applications are rejected. The Minister stopped in his tracks to say that should be something we consider. Okay, let us consider it. People have a right to seek asylum. It is natural many of them will not be successful. That is okay. People have that right. We do not get to control that. The presidential election was fought over who was more pro- or less pro-European Union. If that is what is being complained about, we have signed up to international agreements and if you want to deconstruct them, maybe you should revisit your belief system.

Through parliamentary questions the Minister has also confirmed that of that number of 80% at least one in three is successful on appeal. The Minister is referring to 80% but one in three people of that percentage are successful on appeal. What does that tell us? There is a red flag. It is the first-instance system that is wrong hundreds of times a year. That is not efficiency; that is failure.

The Tánaiste went on to say that people who fail to comply with deportation orders should be "detained". Here again the Tánaiste sells drama instead of facts. Detention already exists under section 5 of the Immigration Act 1999. It allows for detention for up to 56 days extendable only by court order. We have detentions in prisons at the moment but our prison system is operating at 124% capacity. Is Fine Gael, the party of law and order, telling us that those people with outstanding deportations hanging over them should go into the prison system to increase that percentage? Will we see what we saw for example in Limerick last year when people who had committed actual crimes were released from prison so that we could detain people who had committed no crime? That is the extent of what the Tánaiste said. These are the debates we need to go into.

Both the Minister and the Minister of State said today that these those who work and are living in centres should pay for their accommodation. That was outlined as if both of them sat down and came to this determination just by themselves in a room presumably without any evidence basis or business case. Even the Government's own memo on this policy tells us it will cost €1.6 million to set it up and deliver a low-rate return. It even admits major difficulties in enforcement and recovery. There is no evidence of contribution models with high compliance rates in any EU member state. It just weakens one of the pull factors attracting international protection applicants to Ireland. This is the performative cruelty idea that people present as reasonable. Of course, perhaps the people in a position to pay could do so. However, when the Minister and the Minister of State were in that room deciding this policy without any evidence, did they consider that these working people might also have childcare and afterschool needs? They might want to put themselves in a position where they could save for the deposit for rent to try get some accommodation in a failed housing market that they did not create but are now being blamed for.

The Tánaiste went on to say that migration outside asylum is also too high. Here is where the hypocrisy really shows. In 2024, the Government issued 38,189 employment permits, the highest number ever with over 32,000 new permits and 5,700 renewals. I am sorry that the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, just left the Chamber because she put out a strong press release talking about the fact that we need migration in this country because we are operating at such low levels of unemployment. However, the Tánaiste did not say that. He just simply said that migration at all levels is too high, whistling a little bit for somebody to hear, but when you break it down-----

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