I don’t agree with any form of a Rwanda policy – Walsh
FINE Gael MEP Maria Walsh has said she is against the EU bringing in any policy similar to the controversial proposal by the British government to send asylum seekers to Rwanda while their applications are being processed. The former Rose of Tralee winner was one of the Irish MEPs to back the new EU Migration Pact which passed through the European Parliament last week. Ireland is opting-in to the pact, which will mark the biggest overhaul in Irish immigration law in decades and introduce a new fast-tracked procedure for asylum seekers who arrive without passports so that decisions on their applications are made within 12 weeks.
The European People’s Party (EPP), an umbrella group representing the centreright political parties in the European Parliament, of which Fine Gael is a member, recently launched their manifesto for the upcoming elections, which proposed sending asylum seekers to countries outside the EU to be processed.
Ms Walsh said: ‘I don’t agree with any form of a Rwanda policy. I don’t think anybody in the Irish Government would either and for me, hence the reason for this pact. And we have that two-year period to really build a sustainable model, that we shouldn’t have to rely on third countries.’
When asked how she squares disagreeing with her European political grouping the EPP, she said it was a ‘broad church’ and Fine Gael have ‘remained centre left’ in the group.
She said the pact will help countries right across the EU ‘scrambling’ to deal with the movement of people.
While the idea of using a third country to process asylum seekers was not included in the Pact, it will be a topic of debate in the next European Parliament. Ms Walsh is also out of step with some of her Fine Gael colleagues in the European Parliament on the issue. Ireland South MEP Sean Kelly said that EU is already relying on countries outside the block to hold asylum seekers while their applications are processed.
‘It’s to protect rather than inhibit, and to speed up rather than slow down, but also to distinguish between those who are entitled and those who are not,’ he added.
Mr Kelly said if a third country can be used in a ‘coherent manner’ and in line with international obligations he supports it.
He said the idea of a European Rwanda policy ‘is one of these fake stories that gets attached to something, and its completely different.’
Ms Walsh also said that EU countries dealing with non-EU countries to process asylum seekers has not worked well.
The EU Migration pact has been in the works since 2014, when the first migrant crisis impacted Europe, but Ms Walsh said it should not have taken a decade to formulate the EU’s response.
Ms Walsh, who is hoping to retain her seat as an MEP in the upcoming elections, said the movement of people across Europe will only increase and the block needs to be prepared.
She added: ‘If people from Palestine seek protection in the EU, that’s also our responsibility to protect them.’