Seanad debates
Thursday, 3 July 2025
EU Regulations: Motions
2:00 am
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
Let us be clear, however; I do not believe we should join it at all. Let us look at what was in that proposal that has been withdrawn, which comes from the same kind of logic in terms of safe countries. It comes from the same kind of perspective, which is a neocolonial perspective and a colonial perspective in terms of determining or arbitrating the lives of others. The change would mean that rather than having to have a connection to the country a person might be deported to, it would say the concept of a country of return would include, among other things, habitual residence, first country of asylum, third country where the individual has a right to enter and reside and, crucially, third countries where there is an agreement or arrangement concluded bilaterally or at EU level. Therefore, it is a country that the EU strikes a deal with. Let us look at the record of those in terms of the immigration control deals Europe has put in place in the past to keep people from even reaching European borders. Consider the immigration control deal we had with Libya, where the most horrendous human rights abuses have been documented, or the immigration control deal we struck with Sudan that contributed to the arming of what became actors in the war that is ongoing there currently. Those are some of the ways the EU has struck deals in its 11 immigration control deals. There was the insertion of borders between countries that did not have borders between them previously because they are to serve EU interests. That is the record of the kinds of deals Europe has struck with regard to European immigration control. I would call it nonsense, but it is too severe and serious in its consequence. This is the El Salvador piece or the Rwanda piece whereby Europe can designate a country and state that, even if these people have nothing to do with or no connection to this country, because Europe has a deal with that country, we will send them there. It is an outsourcing, not of the vindication of human rights, but it is a derogation and an abdication of our duty around human rights and international law, and it is a displacement and outsourcing that will, in effect f effectively sending people to situations where their rights cannot be vindicated. That is what was in the third proposal, which has been pulled back, and that is a deeply colonial logic. Let us have a deeper consideration of all the proposals, given that this was part of the picture. Let us pull back and consider them all with regard to an Article 4 accession or non-agreement or non-opt in. Clearly, these are logics that need interrogation in Ireland, which, as one of the only countries in Europe with a colonial history of being colonised, should have a particular attention to these consequences.
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