Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)

It is important to step back from framing of migration as a crisis, a problem or even something new. Migration is one of the great facts of humanity and it has happened always. In Ireland, we have been reminded in very stark terms recently, looking at Gaza, of exactly how colonialism operates. We have also been reminded of exactly how famine impacts.The piece we should not forget and should have to mind is migration, how it was at the time, when we look back to the Famine, when two million Irish people went to the United States and Liverpool in a very short space of time and there were panicked articles in the press in the UK, Boston and across the US about what these Irish would do, and how the Irish were treated. We know that many of those who left and travelled as migrants contributed to the building of America, a country which is, with the exception of the Native American indigenous persons, entirely made of migrants, something one would not think when we see some of the rhetoric being employed there currently.

I have a few myth-busting facts and will share some of them: the fact that Ireland has incredibly low levels of illegal migration - 0.3 persons per 1,000, well below the EU average of three; the fact there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker; that a large number of migrants are children; and that asylum seekers are a very small part of the migration that happens in Ireland, which again you would not believe when you hear the rhetoric that is used.

One of the problems we have had in Ireland is that we have not been planning appropriately. It is not that we need to magic up things. It is that we created the Housing for All strategy under the previous Government which literally did not plan for migration. It included nothing in terms of a demographic fact, which we knew even then, for example, regarding Ukraine, that there would be migrants arriving. Therefore, when migrants arrive, in particular when asylum seekers or others fleeing desperate situations arrive, it is treated as a crisis, deployed from a different Department, and a question of what do we do with 200 or 100 or 60 people who have arrived, when in fact it is entirely predictable and should be planned for if we are genuine about housing for all. It should be part of a strategy.

Migration is being used internationally now as an excuse. We face real crisis in terms of climate change and what that means for the desertification and making unliveable of large parts of the world. We face a real crisis in respect of conflict which again, we see in the European Union. We are funding and supplementing some of the arms manufacturers who fuel that crisis. These are genuine things we should be afraid of, but instead, we have fear focused on, fed and stoked towards migrants, who are at the blunt edge of the things that are a threat to all of us and to our well-being.

We criticise the United States but we need to look at Europe. We used to rescue 8,000 people every year from the Mediterranean, and then it was decided to move from a humanitarian to a security focus and to disappear those persons so that, instead, we had them in camps in Libya or elsewhere. This is crucial. I have a specific question for the Minister of State. A terrible proposal was made by the European Union which Ireland, as I understand it, has not opted into yet, that people would be deported to countries to which they have no connection, the same thing we see happening in the United States, simply because the EU might sign a deal with that country. Can the Minister of State confirm Ireland has not opted into that - I believe and hope we have not - and that Ireland will not opt in to such a programme which would be going against all basic principles of human rights? Can he confirm we will not opt in to that optional protocol from Europe?