Alex White (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for facilitating this debate. I was struck by something Senator McDonald said at the outset when she examined what the word "integration" means. It is a word that is thrown around a lot. It is something everybody believes in and thinks of as a positive thing. I am sure we all subscribe to it.

However, there is a certain fuzziness to it sometimes, as Senator McDonald identified. It strikes me that one cannot ultimately detach what one's integration policy is or what one wants it to be from the harder questions of immigration policy. Some of the areas referred to by Senator Regan, such as delays in applications for status, lack of consistency in the application of different rules by the Department and an absence of a clear policy that people can understand, are all very relevant to integration.

If one has a cohort of people in one's country who are uncertain of their status and futures and when or where they will see their families again, one builds into their lives a permanent sense of the temporary. If people have a permanent or semi-permanent sense of the temporary in their lives, how are they expected to integrate and take the steps any person or citizen needs to take to integrate into the society around them?

I suggest to the Minister of State and my colleagues that we ought not to think that we can detach the sometimes fuzzier issue of integration from the hard-nosed central issues of what should constitute our immigration policy. In that sense, I regret the fact that there appears to have been a further delay in proceeding with the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill. It has not been produced again this session. It is time it was produced, particularly given that the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, said last week that it might be necessary to introduce legislation in this area every year. He is not in the House at the moment but will perhaps be in a position to respond to this and perhaps we will get an opportunity to ask him again about it.

The statement by the Minister of State was curious, especially when we do not even have the basic legislation in place. He was saying that we might have to introduce new legislation every year. It might help if we could have one Act as this would then enable us to understand the basis upon which the Government wishes us to view its immigration policy in all its various facets. I have some concerns about elements of the Bill but we will wait and perhaps have a longer debate on that in due course.

The notion of a legal pathway to permanence is something towards which every citizen has an aspiration. We have debated the issue of the Irish in the US over and over again in this House and are supporting the campaign in the US. What is that about? It is about people having a sense that they will be able to put their roots down properly in the society they are in, send their children to the local schools, buy their house, get jobs and settle in. These are the kinds of things that any human being, worker, employee or employer wishes to do and is something to which we should aspire for people who come to this country.

Some other Senators argue that we cannot divorce or detach the notion of integration from some of the other issues relating to our labour market. I have previously raised the question of agency workers and the agency workers directive. Surely this issue is linked to integration? I asked the Minister of State to indicate why on 5 December 2007, the Government again joined with one or two other states in blocking the draft directive on agency workers. This directive would equalise the rights and entitlements of persons who are brought into this country by agencies with those of their counterparts who work directly for firms. Again, this is a vitally important issue if we are serious about integration. Why should people not see that they have basic rights in employment? These are basic, not enhanced rights. They are just the same rights held by their counterparts who are Irish citizens or have come here other than by being introduced through agencies. This issue is not separate from integration but is entirely relevant to it.

I welcome the fact that the position the Minister of State holds has been accepted by the Government. This is a positive step and has been welcomed across the board by a number of different organisations. It is right that we also should welcome it and wish the Minister of State well in the task he has undertaken because it is important. I wonder whether the figure of €9 million, which was mentioned in his speech, is in any way sufficient for the task at hand but it is a start and we must see how things progress.

The Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy Haughey, the Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Carey, and others will be familiar with the fact that Ministers sometimes straddle different Departments. This is particularly true in the case of the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan. I wonder how this will ultimately work and whether there will be a real sense of a Minister of State being able to call the shots on the issue and make real executive decisions or whether he will simply be somebody who is somewhat semi-detached from two or three different Departments. I hope this does not turn out to be the case.

With regard to what has been referred to as the softer issue of integration, if one can call it that, there is a big job to be done in terms of engaging public debate and support for it. We need to take a hearts and minds-type approach to this. Former Senator Maurice Hayes leads the National Forum on Europe, and other fora have been set up to deal with other issues, including the North. Perhaps this is an area where we should consider a forum of that kind even if it is a travelling forum and we have to devote some resources to it. It is something that needs to be taken into civil society, not just talked about here in Dublin. As Senator O'Toole and others have said, we should engage with sporting organisations and organisations that have standing in the community, not just the NGOs. I have huge regard for the different NGOs involved in this debate but it is too big and important to be left to groups of NGOs, however vitally important their work.

Some of the NGOs with which I have been in contact have expressed concern about the level of real engagement which the Minister of State has had with them. It is early days but I hope that he would respond to their request for closer and more meaningful consultation in respect of the way forward he proposes to take.

Other Senators have dealt with the issue of education. In fairness to the Minister of State, he has identified education and language as two vital pillars of an integration policy. Nobody could disagree with that because they are at the heart of what needs to be done. Some Government speakers have pointed to the extra spending on language support teachers in primary schools and so on, with which I am familiar and which I very much welcome. However, it is not nearly enough. More resources are required.

We constantly call for resources and such a call can be just a catch cry but there is a genuine need there. Knowledge of and the ability to speak the language of the country where one lives is vital for any individual, citizen or family seeking to make a life for themselves. We should support and encourage immigrants, many of whom, in my experience, are very anxious to learn English. We sometimes suggest that people should be told that they must learn English or that it is an absolute requirement. Immigrants are only too keen to learn English if the support and facilities are there. If the State or the VEC provides these language courses, by all means charge immigrants a fee, perhaps a modest fee on a sliding scale. Many immigrants I know and have met are only too willing to improve their English and improve themselves in that way.

The overall point has been made by my colleagues and is one that my party and I support. The balance sheet in terms of the impact of immigration in this country has never been anything other than positive in the past decade. We should all see it as a great opportunity for our country and for those people who come here. The people who come to our shores should not be feared and immigration should not be debated in that context, rather it should be viewed as a great and positive opportunity. It is here to stay for Ireland and this is an interesting start to the debate, to which I hope we return in due course.