Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 24:

In page 19, between lines 15 and 16, to insert the following:

“Report on the gathering of data in respect of smuggling

17. The Minister shall, within 12 months of the passing of this Act and on an annual basis thereafter, lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas outlining emerging patterns in respect of the smuggling of persons and what steps have been taken to establish safe passage routes to reduce reliance on or vulnerability to people smuggling.”.

This amendment seeks to ensure that within 12 months of the passing of this Act and annually thereafter a report be produced which outlines the patterns in regard to the smuggling of persons and what steps have been taken to establish safe passage routes to reduce the reliance on and vulnerability of persons to smuggling.

As I said earlier and when we discussed Operation Sophia a number of years ago in this House, the cause of smuggling is not the existence of smugglers or boats. The driver of smuggling is the existence of desperation, war, conflict and, crucially, the lack of alternative legal safe passage routes. There is a deep inadequacy of safe passage routes, as we know. That is why I suggest we should use the tracking of smuggling, and when we respond to it, the responding measures should not simply be prosecutions and convictions but instead moving our policy forward. That is what I ask to be tracked. Does it concern people seeking family reunification? Where are people coming from? Do they come from countries in which we need to have direct humanitarian assistance programmes in place? Where are the points of vulnerability? What are the drivers of smuggling? What are the situations involved? As outlined, people go to smugglers with everything they have and get into boats or vehicles, or cling to the undercarriage of airplanes as we have seen out of desperation. People would not do that unless they considered it to be the only option available to them. One of the main drivers of smuggling is not simply criminal gangs. It is a demand-led not supply-led business. In that regard, we must address the need and vulnerability of persons to smugglers and criminal gangs, and - closely related to that - traffickers.

I ask the Minister of State that we have an annual report where we look at the patterns in regard to how and where people are smuggled; the kind of people who are smuggled; and the kinds of protections people seek when they reach Ireland or other protocol countries. Could those protection mechanisms, perhaps, have been offered through better family reunification laws?

The Minister of State will be aware that we have legislation that passed all Stages in this House and is on the Dáil Order Paper which addresses the fact that Ireland narrowed the definition of family to such an extent that significant numbers of families fall completely outside of the remit. It relates now to only spouses and children. It means that some people who are 19 or 20 years of age, in many cases, have no family member who they are entitled to be reunified with. The purpose of what I propose is to identify the patterns and countries of origin which may be in need of specific programme,s either from Ireland alone or collectively with the UN or our EU partners. It is also to identify the types of visas that people seek when they arrive, to which, perhaps, we could be providing better and safer routes. I ask that this matter be addressed.