Ireland has an unpaid debt to migrants who are hit hardest by climate change

Now comes the season of doing our accounts. Ireland is experiencing escalating demand from asylum applicants as worldwide migration rises. What has that to do with us, you may say – we’re not persecuting or waging war on anyone. But poverty inflicted by climate change is also a key driver for migration and Ireland, with its high agricultural and greenhouse gas emissions, is a contributor. Our hands are far from clean.

We can’t ignore cause and effect between the arrival of migrants on our doorstep, and our share of the blame for failing to respond fast enough or fully enough to climate shock. Altered weather patterns are causing droughts, flooding, hurricanes and wildfires, laying waste to crops and destroying livestock, hindering people’s attempts to earn a living.

Ireland is missing its climate targets by a considerable margin. We were meant to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 but recent projections put the figure at 29pc. Meanwhile, natural disasters – with their roots in human activity – are forcing many migrants to look for alternatives, including travelling long distances to places where it’s made apparent to them they aren’t wanted.

They come here hoping to find anchorage, trusting to make a life. Yes, some are economic migrants rather than the oppressed victims of tyrannical regimes. And yes, many are entering the Republic through the open border with Northern Ireland, after crossing from Britain: Justice Minister Helen McEntee estimates four in five are currently arriving in Belfast and spilling southwards.

Clearly, the migration system is on the brink of being tightened. Measures envisaged include an accelerated decision-making process for migrants from the country with most applicants. But won’t naming the territory risk inflaming racial tensions? Inevitably, it will be divisive.

The Government also wants Ireland to opt in to the new EU asylum and migration pact to harmonise procedures. Under the deal, Ireland could choose to pay €12m to avoid taking asylum-seekers. However, in the Oireachtas Senator Michael McDowell has called the pact “surrendering of sovereignty rights of the most serious and far-reaching kind” and “a constitutional level change to our laws”. He has a point.

As regards migrants arriving via the North, the Government is in a predicament. A soft border is a political and social imperative, and checks can’t be introduced because that undermines the open border. Nor can gardaí be instructed to run random checks for identity papers because that’s racial profiling.

The migrant question needs humane solutions. Throwing around talk about deterrence hardly deals with the issue because it doesn’t consider the reasons for migration. Few people leave behind everything they know for fun and adventure – they do it because they are desperate. And that takes us back to Ireland’s responsibilities as a contributor, on however small a global scale, to climate change. We have a moral responsibility.

Tightening borders won’t reduce the flow. There is a long history of leaders telling their citizens they will police their borders and stop illegal entrants, but Britain has more immigrants than ever despite Rishi Sunak standing at a podium with “Stop The Boats” emblazoned in red and white across it. That’s hostile sloganeering which demonises defenceless people.

Various so-called solutions, including his Rwanda scheme, are non-solutions – they don’t stop the boats. More than 400 people arrived on the day a controversial bill designed to deter asylum-seekers by sending them to Rwanda passed the Westminster parliament. It’s estimated charter flights could begin the process in 10 to 12 weeks.

Tragically, a matter of hours after the legislation was agreed earlier this week, five people including a child were crushed to death in an overcrowded boat crossing the Channel from France to England – a stretch of water fast becoming a grave site.

Is it possible some of the people jammed into those inflatable dinghies set out intending to transit onwards to Ireland? It seems a possibility for some, at least.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of loose talk in government circles about how something has to be done about the flow of migrants from the North – apparently, meetings must be scheduled. Taoiseach Simon Harris and Helen McEntee both talked about them: between the gardaí and PSNI, between the Justice Minister and Britain’s Home Secretary, and with a group overseeing the Common Travel Area. “Must Have More Meetings” is a preferable refrain to “Stop the Boats” but essentially it’s a hollow message. It conveys an impression of action without delivering anything.

Why should the British authorities collaborate to keep migrants from entering the Republic or agree to them being returned to the North? It’s hardly in the UK’s interests.

And so on they come, those tired, poor, huddled masses, “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” as the Statue of Liberty has it – words which now look tarnished in the United States and don’t ring true here, either.

So far this year, McEntee says more than 5,000 people have applied for asylum, and over half are secondary movements. Migrant men are living in a tent village around the International Protection Office in Dublin’s Mount Street, an inherently toxic arrangement. Sleeping rough is unsafe, unhygienic and mentally stressful.

It is morally shabby to treat people in such a way. Seeking asylum is a human right. We need more nimble and effective systems in place – the public is frustrated that we’re still in emergency response territory dealing with this.

But there has been a sustained political failure to get to grips with the issue. In London to represent Ireland for St Patrick’s weekend, Simon Harris described it as “inhumane” and said speedy interim measures were needed – no sign of them yet.

The danger is it will become normal to see refugees sleeping rough: the shock factor will fade and people will grow immune to the jolt from the sight of that tent city. If that happens, we will have reached a chilling milestone.

Accounts need to be totted up, including an unpaid debt to people from areas of the world vulnerable to extreme weather patterns. We have been part of the climate change problem, now we must be part of the solution.

‘It is morally shabby to treat people in such a way. Seeking asylum is a human right. We need more nimble and effective systems in place – the public is frustrated that we’re still in emergency response territory dealing with this’