Brendan Ryan (Labour)

The judgment of Ministers is a matter of concern and that judgment seems to be harsher under the present regime.

This provision makes life more miserable for people whose lives are already miserable. It potentially criminalises large numbers of innocent people. I do not believe these checks will be operated with the rigour the Minister seeks. I do not recall any particularly thorough checks on my occasional ferry trips to France. How will someone checking people onto a busy ferry in Cherbourg or Roscoff know this State's visa requirements for third country nationals? How are people with passengers in their cars to know that? The operators will say it is not their responsibility, but a person driving the car with third country nationals in it – perhaps these people might be his or her friends – will be criminalised. This will achieve nothing because people will come by other routes.

If the driver of a container arrives in Rosslare and hears a noise coming from it, what is the likelihood he will try to find out if there are people in it knowing that if there are, he or his boss will be fined €3,000 for every individual found where a driver is found to have been negligent in any way? Perhaps he rushed through and did not carry out a thorough check. The chances are that drivers of such vehicles will wait until they get to a place where they will not be open to legal sanction before checking a container. That point is made in a briefing note we received this morning from three organisations involved in this area.