Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was fortunate enough to bump into the Minister of State prior to departing for Ragusa on a 40 hour round trip to Sicily to look at migrant reception centres there. I commend the Minister of State and his Department on putting this strategy in place, for it has not arrived a day too early. The crisis of migration across the Mediterranean is in its infancy. I was shocked by the numbers I saw there.

It is instructive to read into the record what has happened. In 2011, fewer than 2,000 people arrived in Pozzallo. By 2014, that number had gone up to 28,000. In 2016, it was at 19,000. This year so far, before the season starts, it is already at 4,168. However, one of the great problems we have in Europe is that, out of 21 countries that attended the seminar laid on by the Italian Government in Ragusa, it is my belief that at least ten of them have no intention of getting involved in reception centres or the integration of migrants.People are no longer running from Syria. The 19,000 who arrived last year arrived from Eritrea, Guinea, the Gambia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Sudan and Mali. This year, the majority of the migrants who have arrived in the part of Sicily to which I referred were from Bangladesh, Nigeria and Guinea. There is a crisis in migration and it is hitting the EU and coming at us like a train down the railway tracks. Between 500 and 1,000 people a day are landing in just one port in Sicily. Traffickers are making massive, absolutely unbelievable profits. Refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants - what are they? We do not know. They do not arrive with papers because any papers they have are taken from them before they embark to sail across the Mediterranean in what are only buckets, to say the very least.

Co-operation in the EU is far from consistent across all countries. I am delighted the Minister of State adverted to the issue of our wanting our own people on the ground out there assessing migrants whom we would bring to Ireland. I brought this up at the meeting and it was met with the most hostile rejection, but I kept my cool and at the end I brought it up again and said we had been told there was a need for solidarity. They wanted solidarity one way but not the other. They wanted us to accept whatever they told us and whatever migrants were sent, but they did not want us to have any say on the ground in Italy. The matter is to come before the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union, COSAC. Perhaps people are wondering why I am bringing this up here, but it is a matter of some urgency. COSAC will meet on 27 May in Malta, when the issue of seconding experts from each of the EU 27 to the refugee reception centres in order that we have experts in migration, experts in medical issues and so on will be discussed. The Irish should have their own migration experts on the ground in Sicily and Greece, if necessary, in order that we can assess for ourselves those who are true refugees who need to come here.

Europe will have to deal with the issue of economic migrants. When tens of thousands of young men come in from Bangladesh claiming asylum, "asylum from what" is asked. These are not my words; I am merely reporting what I saw on the ground out there. There are cases before the European courts at present to stop economic migrants from other countries coming in through the European borders. There is now a desire - to my mind, a good desire - to set up reception centres on the north African coast in order to deal with the issue in north Africa and put the traffickers out of business.

I wish to deal with the issue of migrants who do get here and the document the Minister of State put together. I could sit him in a car-----