Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)

I share the concern many have expressed about the proposals before us. I echo what we have heard across the House about recognising migration as something that has happened for centuries and millennia and something that is often a net positive for countries. Ireland, with its history of migration in different economic and political circumstances, circumstances of conflict and so on, as well as its record of contribution globally, should have a particular understanding of migration.

Part of the context around migration is that right now we have the highest levels ever recorded of displaced and internally displaced people worldwide. The drivers for much of this increased migration are conflicts, our increasingly militarised world and our increasing focus on conflict. That is something Europe needs to reflect on, as one of the great arms-producing areas of the world and a part of the world that is, it seems, deeply committed to escalating militarisation internationally. That is alongside our greater contribution to climate change, which is one of the greatest and most desperate drivers of people moving. We need only look to the micro context of Gaza to see that people move for hunger. The extreme famine conditions we saw recently in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere have been exacerbated by climate and by the failure of western countries, including European countries, to step up to their responsibilities. We have to consider that context, rather than employing tunnel-vision language around the burden of migration within Europe and how to deal with it. Let us talk about the burden of poverty, conflict and environmental devastation that is being placed on people around the world.

I turn to my specific concerns on the proposals before us. Asylum processes need to be fair and functioning, but that cannot come at the expense of human rights. At the heart of every application is a human being, a person or sometimes a family, whose rights must be respected as they make a claim for asylum in Ireland. The motions raise concerns about the human rights of those individuals and families.

The first proposal regards opting in to the asylum procedures regulation, which provides that the EU can designate safe countries. It states a country can only be designated safe if it is shown there is no persecution, as defined by EU regulation. However, several of the countries that will be deemed safe by the EU regulations have well-documented human rights violations, including violent repression of political opposition, imprisonment of journalists, widespread gender-based violence and, as has been highlighted, violence and penalties against those who are LGBT simply for their existence. These are also incredibly dangerous place for human rights defenders. Italian courts, for example, have ruled that some of the countries the EU designates as safe are not, in fact, safe.There is a serious concern around how these EU regulations will work in practice. For example, one criterion for a county to be deemed safe is that the EU-wide recognition rate is below 20%. This is a blunt tool. It is a standardised mechanism or an algorithm for making a decision rather than being a safety assessment, which is what should be required, with regard to the individual asylum applicants and their potential safety. Again, it can lead to blanket discrimination by country of origin rather than individuals accessing their rights and having their rights vindicated.

In terms of the well-documented human rights violations in some of the EU-designated safe countries, applications from these countries will be fast-tracked. The fast-tracking of these in these circumstances will undermine the human rights of the applicant. Speeding up these processes without adequate resources can lead to mistakes. We had situations in the past of extraordinarily poor decisions being made in the first round that needed to be reversed on appeal. I recall situations where cut-and-paste decisions were being made where the gender of the person was wrong. There were so clearly cut-and-paste decisions historically in Ireland where people had to have that corrected on appeal, for example. These mistakes often have life and death consequences for individuals.

The legal supports are inadequate and many may go through the system without even meeting a lawyer. We need a properly resourced asylum system that gives safe and legal routes for asylum seekers and refugees. There is only one organisation in Ireland that can assess torture victims, and it has a six- to 12-month waiting list. That is the kind of area where considerable focus and resources should be placed on ensuring the dignity of the applicants and their personal safety assessment. Human dignity is a fundamental European value. The Charter of Fundamental Rights in the EU states, "Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected." The proposal before us do not guarantee that.

There has been some spectacle around the issue of deportation flights. Many people were disturbed to see five children deported from the country last month. A principal at the school two of the children attended outlined how their mother was waiting on a scheduled immigration appointment at the time of the deportation. The children were on the football team and had participated in the GAA for two years. They had friends. They were well integrated in the community. The school advocated for them to be able to stay. These are questions regarding protections. How does this serve the public interest? Is it simply that we are talking of our capacity for housing and these kinds of issues are being put in? These are failures in the provision for persons in terms of conditions of living well in Ireland. It is very hard to see how the balance of risk to an individual is balanced here with the public interest. Within the proposal before us, the construct of non-entry could allow for indefinite detention at borders. UN experts have stated that detaining migrant children is never in the best interests of the child, is always in violation of children's rights, and, I would say again, is not in the public interest.

The second proposal relates to the application of the safe third country. The third proposal has been removed. My time is running out, so I am actually going to focus on the proposal that has been removed because it is key. As has been said, the fact that it has been removed reflects the concerns that are there because the same logics are underpinning the withdrawn third proposal, which I think the Minister said we will consider if we join it under Article 3 or Article 4.