Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Okay, I accept that. I do not know how many people here have been to a detention centre. I have. I saw two teenage children, who happened to be the same age as my children, on the Hungarian-Serbian border who had been kept in a cage for six months and were not let out of that cage for one minute of one day during the period. When one of the political associates on that trip, from the far right, started dismissing the teenager as he broke down, saying they were fake tears, I did not know where to look or where to go, yet this is what we are talking about. This is the reality of the detention centres that are going to be set up. Senator Higgins has highlighted over 50 human rights agencies who have spoken about their concerns about this and I have seen at first hand what those detention centres look like, so please do not tell me the European values we hear about are going to be implemented as part of this pact, because they are not. They certainly are not. I remind the Minister we believe that since 2016 150,000 civilians, including thousands of children, have been abducted and transferred to those Libyan camps. Despite this we think it is okay to sign up to an EU migration pact.

Senator Higgins has spoken about the withdrawal of search-and-rescue missions. It has been referred to as killing by omission in terms of Frontex. I think of the scandal of Frontex and the human rights abuses it is guilty of, which have been so well documented. The European Union has taken a clear decision not to rescue people so that it will deter other people from travelling. We should think about that for a second. We are talking about human beings. We are talking about the mass drowning of human beings that continues even as I am making this speech. It appears this Government thinks we should sign up to this pact and hand over sovereignty on these issues to the very people who are making that happen. When I spoke to the Minister about the Libyan Coast Guard, she said, in fairness to her, that she would never stand over those practices, so what has happened since? Now she is quite happy to sign up to a pact that has, as a fundamental piece of architecture, the Libyan Coast Guard. I am genuinely disturbed by this. Then there is the issue of people who arrive and are literally put back into vans, put back onto the sea and pushed back illegally. I confronted the Greek minister for migration two years ago last September on this issue because there have been such well-documented cases of what is happening to human beings. Again, he declared with a flourish and a wave of his hand that it was fake news. We know where those type of phrases come from.

As Senator Higgins said, why do we never discuss what is driving this mass migration? Why do we never discuss the wars initiated and supported by the West? Many of those wars are supported through Shannon Airport, incidentally, which again no one wants to acknowledge or recognise. The West has a huge role in this horrendous mess. When people talk about economic migrants, one thing that comes to mind is I am economic migrant. I spent plenty of years forced out of this country. My parents spent a whole lifetime forced out of this country. Have we forgotten who we are? Have we forgotten our own history? Have we forgotten, as Senator Higgins said, the Famine? My God. Where are those values we keep hearing about? I just do not see them here.

Then there is the issue of what we do in the meantime. This pact is coming in in two years’ time. What are we going to do in the meantime and why has the Government ignored the Catherine Day report for four years? It is not as if we did not know there was a huge uptick in migration coming. Micheál Martin himself said we could expect 200,000 Ukrainians and as it turns out we have had about half that. However, this Government has, for its lifetime, done nothing to implement the Catherine Day report and now is telling us it is going to do it. I do not believe it. I agree with Senator McDowell on one point he made, namely, this notion we are suddenly going to be able to process people in three months is an absolute fiction. How does the Government do that and how does it do so in a human rights-compliant way? Is it going to magic up another 6,000 to 10,000 barristers and solicitors? It is not going to happen, so that is all based on a fiction.

For all of those reasons, we should vote against the pact. I really object to the idea we have one vote on this. We should be voting on each individual area because, as I said, there are some parts Sinn Féin could sign up to even with all our concerns. What is happening here leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Anyone who knows me knows I have no time for the dog-whistle politics I expect we will shortly hear. Everyone knows there are real human rights concerns here and it should not just be being said on one side of the Chamber, but from all sides of the Chamber. This will be seen to be a huge mistake by the Government. I have made a very clear human rights case for why we should not do this. I am also making a call again for action right now on how we deal with the horrendous mess this Government has created. I agree with Senator Moynihan there is a political issue here. It suits the Government to leave this in a mess. It suits the Government to have our people divided. It is a huge mess and it is owned entirely by the Minister’s Government. It is a disgrace to have human beings sleeping in tents along our riverbanks and canals. It should never have come to this. The Government was given a report four years ago that told it what actions it needed to take and it simply did not take those actions.

In summary, Sinn Féin is against this proposal. We are against it because it encroaches on sovereignty, ignores the unique situation of our country with respect to the common travel area and also completely ignores the appalling and ever-worsening human rights record in relation to asylum and human beings trying to reach here. Amnesty International has said:

It is clearer than ever that this EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will set back European asylum law for decades to come, lead to greater suffering, and put more people at risk of human rights violations at every step of their journeys

Amnesty went on to say:

Since these reforms were first proposed in 2020, every step of the negotiations has further worsened the final outcome – weakening protections and access to asylum for people on the move, expanding detention and containment at borders, and further shifting responsibilities to countries outside of Europe. The Pact will do nothing to improve Europe’s response to people in need of protection.

We need a proper migration system that is properly resourced, properly financed and seen to be fair and efficient. The Government has entirely failed to provide that and now it is going to hand over the decision-making to an organisation with an appalling human rights track record.It really is unconscionable.