TAOISEACH: THERE’S NO MIGRANT CRISIS
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LEO Varadkar said scaremongering from the far right parties gaining power across Europe is leading to the belief there is a migrant crisis.
The Taoiseach added there are less migrants coming to the EU but we still need to help those fleeing war and terror.
He said we will be welcoming more migrants starting with 25 from a humanitarian relief ship in Malta next week.
Mr Varadkar confirmed we will triple aid to €15million to help tackle the problems at source in Africa.
He added: “This isn’t so much migrant crisis as it is a political crisis.
“The number of migrants crossing into Europe is a fraction of what it was three years ago.
“But we have a political crisis because of the fact anti-immigration and populist parties have been electorally successful in Italy and central eastern Europe. We need to respond to the reality of that.
“What we require is a three-pronged approach. Frontex, which is improving a border security –we’re helping with that by participating in Operation Sophia and the Irish Navy in the Mediterranean.
“Secondly is solidarity, us sharing the burden.
“And we’re looking for solidarity over Brexit so we need to offer solidarity when other countries have problems too.” He said that Ireland will be stepping up its efforts in welcoming more migrants to our country.
“That’s why we’ve agreed to accept 25 migrants from the Lifeline Ship which is going to be docking in Valletta soon.
“And we’re going to take around 2,000 more migrants from Italy and Greece. Leo Varadkar at EU conference in Brussels yesterday
with Jean Claude Juncker and Belgium’s premier Charles Michel
We’ve committed to 4,000 – 2,000 have already arrived so we’ll honour the full commitment of taking 4,000.
“And the third thing, which is probably the most important thing, is helping to reduce the push factors which causes people to risk their lives to cross the Sahara desert to go out in dangerous boats in the Mediterranean to leave Africa for Europe.
“The reason why people are leaving Africa in such big numbers if because those countries are unsafe, they’re ungoverned and there’s very little economic opportunity.
“So what we need is more European action and more European money and investment to build institutions to provide security and economic opportunity in Africa.
“And as a result of that, Ireland is agreeing to treble our commitment to the EU Africa trust fund to €15million and that’ll be the third largest commitment per capita of any EU country.”