Joe Conway (Independent)

When I look around the Chamber now and earlier this evening, I am overwhelmed by the fact that practically every Member of the House to whom I have spoken informally in the last few weeks on this particular subject has shown an overwhelming sense of decency. There is a spirit of inclusion and welcoming. In light of that, I praise the people who brought the motion before us tonight and gave us a chance to ventilate our ideas about immigration and the exigencies attached to it. These have been greatly exacerbated in the past couple of days by the Home Secretary’s announcement on Monday about the new dispensation in the UK towards asylum seekers and immigrants. Of course, this places a huge responsibility on us in this country because we are covered by the common travel area agreement and we have a 500 km Border with approximately 275 crossing points. There are more crossings on our Border than there are on the 9,000 km border between Canada and the United States. It underscores the great difficulty there is in immigration policy and policing for us in the Republic. The Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Deputy O’Callaghan, said that we have got to bring forward legislation that is nimble. Like the old nursery rhyme, however, the Minister not only has to be nimble, but also quick. It is important that we respond to the dispensation in the United Kingdom with all alacrity because we do not have the resources right now to police those 275 crossings on our land border with the United Kingdom.

Like almost everyone here, I wish to underscore the great work done by our new Irish, that is, the people who have come here from other countries. They are designated in the health and care services, but there are acres of places where they are making major contributions. I welcome that, just as everyone in this country applauded the opportunities our people were given when they went abroad.

I will say one practical thing. We talked about housing policy and the housing document that came out last week, as well as the skills and labour shortages in the building industry. I put this to the Minister of State: at the moment, we have a six-month bar on people in IPAS looking for work. I ask the Minister of State and his colleagues in the Government to look at the labour market access piece and bring it back to three months so that those people in IPAS could be given the opportunity to contribute to our construction industry and other industries.