Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sure all colleagues will wish to join me in offering sincere condolences to the families of all the many people who were so tragically drowned in the past few days in the seas off the north coast of Africa, particularly off the coast of Libya, and the very distressing reports that it seems 950 people were drowned off one boat in which 250 women and 50 children had been locked in the hold and could not escape. It is an appalling human tragedy. That was only one of the tragedies, as there have been quite a number of others. It is important that we have concerted action on this at EU level. A summit is being held on Thursday. I ask that we request the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to come into the House in the coming weeks to address us on the measures in this respect that are proposed to be taken at EU level and whether we will see a strengthening of search and rescue services, a reinstatement of the type of Mare NostrumOperation that the Italian navy had been carrying out last year and perhaps an increase in the number of those cases settled. In particular, we should address in this House what Ireland's response to this human tragedy will be. There is a concern that a small number of EU countries are bearing a huge burden in terms of trying to deal with the terrible human tragedy of drownings and of human trafficking and that many of the northern European countries, including ourselves, are not so directly concerned. We should be doing more on this and, in particular, taking in more refugees from war-torn countries such as Syria, Libya and so forth.

In this context, we should also address the issue of EU immigration law, the idea of a fortress Europe and, in particular, the Dublin Convention, which has caused a huge problem and the title of which, unfortunately, has the name of our capital city. The difficulty arising from the Dublin Convention has been a cause of many of the problems in dealing with the issue of immigration at EU level and the fact that the first country in which somebody arrives in the EU is the country that takes ownership of the issue. We need to address all these issues with the Minister.

I wish to echo Senator O'Brien's comments on the drugs and alcohol strategy. It would be a good move to have a debate on that in this House. We have had some debate on it at the justice committee but clearly this is more an issue about health than about justice. It would be good to have the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, in attendance to address that issue and also to address the possibility of a junior Minister being appointed with direct responsibility for this area. There is concern that the drugs and alcohol strategy has not been sufficiently prioritised given that there is not a designated junior Minister for this area. I would very much welcome such a debate and I ask that it be arranged in the next few weeks.