Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. The Immigrant Council of Ireland has welcomed the strategy but the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland has effectively rejected it on the basis that it does not involve enough time-sensitive elements and needs to be more concrete in the context of what is trying to be achieved.

I agree with what many other Senators said on integration and immigration issues. These are scary times. Notwithstanding what was said about Trump and Brexit, which was effectively an immigration debate, I am not necessarily as positive as Senator Lawless about recent elections in Europe. Basically, one third of the French electorate voted for a person who is a fascist and a racist. Up to 49% of the Austrian public almost elected a neo-Nazi as president. In fairness to Ireland, we have never had a mainstream political party adopt immigration as a platform at a general election. Minor parties have done so but have had little support at election time. No major political party has listed as a priority in its election manifesto anything about immigration, curbing immigration or any xenophobic platform. We need to be thankful for and recognise that.

We should not be complacent, however. Notwithstanding what has been said, I was somewhat taken aback by self-congratulatory statements regarding the political reaction to what happened in Ballaghaderreen. I remember different things being said by political representatives there before the people made their decision as to how they felt about people coming to their villages. I recall political representatives from that area being a little bit less than welcoming. It was the people - the local shopkeepers and the community - who welcomed the Syrian refugees into their arms. Then the political system began chasing after the people. I found it quite discouraging but then encouraging.

When I held the Minister of State's position, there was no issue that Senators raised more often than direct provision and no issue on which I worked harder. I would love to be the person to declare the end of direct provision. However, when we are dealing with it, we have to work beyond slogans and things that fit neatly into hashtags. Instead, we must deal with reality. We have the McMahon report on direct provision, which was a compromise between several NGOs that felt passionately about this matter and the Department. I was present when the report was launched in July 2015. The Minister for Justice and Equality said it was something to be considered and food for thought. The NGOs that signed off on the report did so at massive risk to their reputations. They are trying hard to improve the system. They thought, in good faith, that the departmental officials would implement the report word for word. It was not a discussion document because the NGOs compromised on issues in respect of which they did not want to compromise, namely, work, oversight and length of stay. When it was signed off, those NGOs felt they could stand over it if it was implemented to the letter. Almost two years on, this has not happened.

This is classic Department of Justice and Equality behaviour. The phrase it always comes back to is "pull factor". It feels that if we show some humanity, we might get pull factor into this country, meaning there might be more of them and what would we do then. This issue should been resolved years ago before we had a housing crisis, an increasing number of asylum applications and before we agreed to take 4,000 Syrian programme refugees. In 2015, at the time of the publication of the report on direct provision, there were 2,695 people who had been in direct provision for over three years. The figure now is 1,200, which means there are 1,500 people fewer in the system than was the case two years ago. That has to be commended. However, how is an NGO going to trust the Department of Justice and Equality and compromise with it on an issue if this report is not implemented?

I am blue in the face saying to the Minister of State that the draft programme for Government contained a commitment to implement the McMahon report. When the actual programme for Government emerged, that sentence had been deleted. I do not know who deleted it. It was not the Minister of State because he did not have this portfolio at the time. Somebody did, however, and I bet it was the Department. I know it has a history of being pretty miserable and unsympathetic when it comes to this entire area. I do not know if we can end direct provision. I do not want to put 4,500 people on a housing list. I do not want to be responsible for stories about vulnerable families being homeless and living in parks under trees. Those were the reports of what happened in 2000. I am not going with hashtags or slogans. However, for God's sake, can we not just implement this report to the letter?

Another issue has been raised in the context of undocumented migrants. It is to the credit of Senator Lawless that he has been working for years to have the undocumented Irish in America regularised. It is to our shame, however, that our entire political system has the brass neck to arrive at the White House to tell the Americans to regularise the undocumented Irish when there are 26,000 undocumented workers here for whom we are not willing to do likewise.How do we have the gumption or the credibility to ask anybody in that white supremacist, racist regime to do something for the Irish when we will not do it here? We are talking about 26,000 individuals, comprising 20,000 workers and about 6,000 children.

Those are the issues we need to recognise. There is immense goodwill in this country for people from overseas. It comes down to the very essence of who we are as a migrant people. We understand the Syrian situation because we are the people who travelled in coffin ships. We understand the dehumanising of people because of their religious beliefs because that is exactly what the Irish went through in America and in Britain. We understand the signs that said "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish". We understand that stuff instinctively, and that is why I believe no political party will ever go down this line. It would not be to the credit of the Minister of State's Department if this nonsense with the 26,000 undocumented workers were not addressed and if this report were not implemented to the letter. I do not believe the Department of Justice and Equality is fit to deal with this issue, because it has to deal with the issues of Garda reform, the prison service, the vast bulk of legislation that goes through these two Houses, all the equality issues and, on top of that, integration, immigration, refugee and asylum issues. This is a sensitive humanitarian issue and it should be put into a separate Department.

I welcome the strategy, notwithstanding that Migrant Rights Centre Ireland has serious issues with it. I fundamentally believe we are political hypocrites if we end up in the White House again talking about undocumented workers in the US without doing something here. I am not asking the Minister of State to end direct provision, but the least we could do, for God's sake, is to implement the report that we commissioned in conjunction with the NGOs two years ago.