‘Not-my-problem’ attitude won’t be allowed to take hold on immigration
Iwas elected Taoiseach 33 days ago, and there are many issues in our country that need immediate action. Migration is one of these. An encampment of tents and hundreds of human beings living on the street in our capital city had become established over months. It was unsafe and unsanitary for locals as well as those claiming asylum. It was on the brink of being a public health emergency. It had to end.
I must commend the departments and agencies that came together at my behest and coordinated a multiagency operation to safely bring the asylum applicants to state shelter.
This is the way we will move forward. I will not allow silos or “not-my-problem” attitudes to take hold when we all have to work together. While we work to increase accommodation places for migrants, we will not allow encampments to bed in for months again. It is unsafe and against the law.
We are working now to stand up more facilities quickly on state land. Again, I am not standing for any more unnecessary delays in making state land available for accommodation.
Minister Roderic O’Gorman is leading this part of the effort, with the support of colleagues across government, and these will be short-term measures as we already have a medium-term plan that couples stateowned accommodation with faster processing.
Getting through applications faster is a key lever we control. We have doubled the number of people working on it and slashed the amount of time it takes for decisions. Minister Helen McEntee has taken action to free up 100 more gardaí from desk duties to work on enforcement, including deportations. People being granted asylum in Ireland will know sooner and people denied will leave sooner.
This system works. Since introducing fast-processing, the number of people applying from safe countries has halved.
But we must do more. That is why we are signing up to the European Union Migration Pact to ensure Europe acts together on migration.
This is a European-wide deal which imposes statutory timelines for the processing of applications and allows for the return of applicants quicker because Ireland cannot do this on its own.
We cannot and should not lose sight of the benefits of migration either.
Our economy is built on being open: we need workers in all sectors like agriculture, in our health service and to build homes. In all, 66,000 people have permits allowing them to work here — 21,000 of those are caring for our families in hospitals or minding our elderly in nursing homes.
It has been troubling to watch Sinn Féin play politics with migration. Having once called for an expansion of our asylum system and an increase in the number of refugees we accept, they are now distributing leaflets to households calling for an end to open borders. They’re saying it in their videos recorded outside the Dáil.
With a straight face, Mary Lou McDonald says she opposes open borders, conveniently missing the 500km of open border between Lough Foyle and Carlingford that we have fought to keep open on this island.
The Irish people need to know Sinn Féin are speaking out of both sides of their mouths and shouldn’t get away with it.
I lead a government of three distinct parties. We are working together on migration. We are working together to pull levers in a number of government departments to ensure Ireland adopts a firmer system and ensures we are not out of kilter with other EU countries.
This will not be a long drawn-out process. The Government will take decisions on this soon.
Governments who speak of enforcing rules on migration can be painted as inhumane, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We have to help those in need and we cannot achieve that without rules-based systems that dismantle the criminal trafficking gangs.
The death of seven-year-old Sara Alhashimi is a case that has troubled me greatly and should cause all of us to pause on the issue and reflect on the language of migration.
Sara was born in Belgium and spent most of her life in Sweden. Her teachers have shared videos with the BBC of a bright and happy little girl playing and having fun in school.
Sara’s father was born in Iraq and media reports say the family was denied asylum in several countries. Sara was crushed and accidentally suffocated by adults in an inflatable boat two weeks ago, a few metres from a French beach.
Police had found human traffickers launching human beings into the dark and dangerous English Channel. What followed was gut-wrenching, a scene of panic and chaos. Sara was buried in Lille in a small ceremony last week.
The migration issue is huge and complex, but in the small life of this much-loved little girl are some of its most troubling dimensions.
How do we tackle the criminals with no regard for life? How do we stop criminal gangs from making money off people’s misery? What do we see if we look behind the desperation of a family who risk the brutal sea with their treasured children?
Where is the information we are being bombarded with on messaging apps coming from?
And what causes the headlines, and our headspace, to turn a “little girl being killed” into a “migrant girl being killed”?
Ireland will maintain a migration system that is firm, fair and enforced, but we will not be found wanting on our international obligations.
It is an unprecedented challenge, but we will meet it by remaining united and taking comprehensive action every day to ensure that we do.