Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House who is getting very fond of us. I congratulate him on his explanation of the Bill.

I proposed the passports for sale legislation some years ago and it was accepted in this House on Second Stage. The then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform went on to introduce his own Bill which incorporated what I was attempting to do. Senator Maurice Cummins referred to this earlier.

I congratulate the Minister of State on the efficiency of the Passport Office which I have used on a number of occasions and with which I have been very impressed. I was upset when I was not allowed to be photographed with a smile. The official said it is supposed to be one's normal face. I felt like saying, "I always smile", but he would not accept it and made me take a second photograph.

As someone who has a special interest in passports, I welcome this long overdue Bill. On a matter as important as this, it beggars belief that there has been no legislation in place until now regulating the issue of passports and the other important matters covered in this Bill. Senator Cummins educated me today. I was unaware when we became a free State of the history of how we established our first passports and our first embassies when as a dominion we were not expected to do so.

I have no great difficulty with any of the measures in this legislation, but I would like to extend our discussion to something that unfortunately is not covered here — Ireland's non-membership of the passport-free Schengen area. The Schengen area is a common travel area of the kind we used to have with the United Kingdom. Within that area, individual national borders do not count as places of control. Once inside the area, one can travel freely without border controls to any other part of the area. Since the Schengen area now includes all of the EU except Ireland and the United Kingdom, this makes practically the whole of Europe one big border-free area. In recent months, I have travelled to Estonia, the Czech Republic and Brussels on a number of occasions. I feel almost like an outsider because while others do not need passports and can have any sort of identification, I must have it. I am also reminded of what travelling between Ireland and the rest of the world was like before the Schengen area came into being and my delight when it became necessary to only go through the blue zone instead of the green and red zones.

Joining the Schengen area has naturally required a strengthening of the controls at the boundaries of the common area for member countries. In other words, while travel within the Schengen area has become freer, getting into the area has been considerably tightened up. This has involved a sharing of data between the 25 member states and the application of common rules for entry and for the issuing of visas.

By and large, I understand the system is working well and that it is very much welcomed by the people in the countries it covers, as I have seen. I can well understand why this is so, because I remember very clearly the excitement I first felt when the special blue customs channel was introduced at our airports for travellers arriving from elsewhere in the EU. It brought home to me very graphically that Europe was now one big customs-free area, and, to be frank, it brought home to me the reality of the new Europe in a way that all the legislation and institutions of the EU had never done. It was the change that caught our imagination.

That was why the further step, the creation of the huge passport-free area that Schengen brought about, excited me too. However, from the outset Ireland stood apart from the development. We stood apart because the UK wished to stand apart, and we had to follow suit because of the existence of our long-standing common travel area with the UK. We had, in effect, to choose between two common travel areas and we chose to stay with the devil we knew rather than the devil we did not know. My view at that time was that this was a retrograde step. We should always be trying to move closer to the rest of the Union, and our staying out of the Schengen process put a permanent and very real barrier in the way of that integration.

Ironically, we made our decision at the same time that the benefits of the common travel area with the UK were being whittled away. Passengers travelling between the two countries have for many years been liable to police inspection at either end of the journey and are often required to prove their identity, so much so that the carrying of passports between the two countries became advisable as a way of avoiding hassle. In addition, Ryanair imposed photo-ID requirements on all passengers. In practical terms, this means that most Irish citizens must carry their passports to be allowed on a Ryanair flight to any destination, even in Britain. Between the Special Branch on one hand and Ryanair on the other, over a number of years this area became a common travel area in name only. In practice, one needed a passport to go from one country to the other. That is the reality today.

The latest news in this regard is that the British intend to tighten up the external controls on the island of Britain rather than in the UK, and they will expect us to do the same. On the basis of our history, we will probably meekly go along with whatever the British want us to do. I do not believe we should do that. We should detach ourselves from the British common travel area and join the much bigger common travel area that already exists across Europe, namely, the Schengen area. This would reflect what I think we all believe, namely, that our future lies much more with being an integral part of Europe rather than simply an appendage to Britain.

We broke the link with sterling and, despite all the gloomy prognostications of that time, we have prospered as a result. We should now take the further step of moving away from a small regional arrangement that is no longer delivering benefits and instead become part of what is now virtually a continent-wide area covering 25 European countries and which is working very well. If we are truly to regard ourselves as part of Europe, there can surely be little doubt as to which decision we should make. While this will give rise to challenges, I believe they are surmountable.

The regulatory framework for Irish passports that will be created by this Bill demonstrates that we have put in place a modern, secure, state-of-the-art system of documentation for our citizens. We are eminently qualified to build on that by joining the Schengen area and we should do so without delay. Because things are changing, those challenges that would have made it difficult to do this in the past can be overcome. I would like to open out this debate because the issue is worthy of debate and of serious consideration.