Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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253. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the position regarding the recent efforts being made at EU and international level to address the migration crisis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31029/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The migration crisis has been one of the greatest challenges facing the EU for the past two years. Migration has featured on the agenda of almost every European Council in the same period, including the recent June European Council.

The EU has responded to the crisis by adopting a range of measures to deal with this mass movement of people. These have included engaging with countries of origin and transit to address the root causes of migration including through the Migration Partnership Framework; agreeing a plan to relocate migrants from Italy and Greece across the Union; the launching of Operation Sophia to disrupt people smuggling in the Mediterranean; and substantial financial assistance to countries hosting large numbers of migrants. EU Heads of State and Government concluded a landmark migration deal with Turkey in March 2016, which has resulted in a very substantial reduction in the number of migrants risking their lives at sea to enter the EU from Turkey.

In the past year or so the migration focus has shifted from Turkey to the so-called Central Mediterranean Route, with more than 70,000 migrants crossing from Libya to Italy so far this year. In March 2017, EU leaders issued the Malta Declaration, which sets out the EU’s commitment to assist Libya, with a strong focus on capacity building.

The June European Council made clear that continuing migratory flows on the Central Mediterranean route leading to an ongoing loss of life remains an issue of urgent concern. It agreed that the EU and its member states had to step up coordination and delivery on all the elements contained in the Malta Declaration, the Partnership Framework and the Joint Valletta Action Plan, underpinned by sufficient financial resources. Training and equipping the Libyan Coast Guard is a key component of the EU approach and the Council agreed that it should be speeded up. Cooperation with countries of origin and transit is to be reinforced in order to stem the migratory pressure on Libya’s and other neighbouring countries' land borders. The European Council underlined in this context the importance of supporting the G5 Sahel Joint force (recently established to address the threat of terrorism, as well as the serious challenges posed by transnational organized crime in the region and made up of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger). There, as elsewhere, the disruption of the business models of human smugglers and traffickers remains a key objective, including by better controlling the trade in equipment used by them.

At the international level, last September's UN Summit in New York on large movements of migrants and refugees marked an important step in the global response to the crisis. The Summit resulted in the unanimous adoption of a Declaration,which was brokered by Ireland, and which contains a commitment to reach agreement in 2018 on Global Compacts on both migration and refugees. Work on both Compacts is already underway and a number of other processes are also feeding into this work, such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development which held its Summit meeting in Berlin just last week.

Of course, the ongoing work of specialised agencies with mandates relating to refugees and migrants, notably UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), as well as others, constitutes an essential element of the international response.