Peadar Tóibín
Meath West · Aontú · Ireland
“Lonely Planet. It did a review of Dublin and stated, "Once Dublin’s grand boulevard, O'Connell St has struggled with decline". It stated that vacant buildings, derelict upper floors and long-stalled redevelopments leave this part looking neglected while retail has shifted elsewhere and been replaced by fast food shops that dilute its char…”
“The Irish people are a generous and decent people and have been over the past number of years, with the provision of supports to people from Ukraine who are fleeing the war. This is right and just. The war unleashed on Ukraine is absolutely wrong. Aontú will support the reduction in the rate of payment under the scheme.”
“I am very disappointed to see that the Government, the Social Democrats, the Labour Party, the Green Party and People Before Profit will vote against an amendment that wants to means test the payment, as an amendment also did on the previous occasion, and put it on a level footing with other housing assistance payments.”
“Landlords are rational and they will make economic decisions to best suit themselves. Landlords have been more inclined to take on Ukrainian tenants over Irish tenants in recent years. This system is discriminatory. It gives an advantage to guests in the country over the people who have lived here for most of their lives.”
“Anyone who sat the leaving certificate economics paper just a few weeks ago will know that demand also has a role. It determines what rents are, the price of houses, etc. It is physics and maths and not ideology. We need to get to a situation where we equalise supply with demand.”
“A global study by TomTom indicated that it is the 38th most congested city globally, behind cities such as London, Toronto and Rome. The task force indicated that the Cork Luas system would be built. That Luas system is in planning and that planning is taking a long while.”
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“My problem here, and this is important so the Minister might just listen to this one bit of my speech if he can, is that is still in the new legislation. In the new legislation, which is a lot better than the previous legislation, the British Secretary of State can still, for national security reasons, prevent an investigation happening. If the Minister were in court, and another politician had the right to determine whether he had an investigation into what happened, he would be frustrated, he would feel it was wrong and he would say it was not justice. It cannot be allowed that the current legacy Bill going through Westminster will leave a British politician to make a decision over whether there is an investigation.”
“The British did not just watch what happened. They were involved in what happened, they participated and they protected their agents who were involved in these actions. Recently, we saw the legacy Act pass through Westminster under the Conservative Party. That legacy Act was the son and heir of the cover-ups that originally happened 30, 40 and 50 years ago, but it was worse because at least 30, 40 or 50 years ago the British Government tried to put blue water between itself, the actions and the cover-up. Now, it is the British Government itself authoring the cover-up of what happened. One of the big problems that exists in that legislation is it allows the British Secretary of State to prevent investigations and inquests.”
“This is a really serious issue. It is an issue the Irish Government has not done the right thing on for a number of years. I will give a couple of reasons. There are three elements to all this. There is what has happened in the Troubles in relation to Irish citizens; what the role of the British state was in those actions; and what exactly the Irish Government did to make sure justice and truth were achieved for families. For years, we have known that families have been fighting for truth and justice in the North of Ireland. In many families now, the original generation has passed on and it is the children who have taken up the campaigns for truth and justice in the North of Ireland. Kenova has exposed, incredibly, the fact that British governments were behind much of the difficulties experienced in the dirty war in the North.”
“When they ask the Government for help, it says "No” and that it is not helping with that. We need proper funds to be made available to families and businesses when their homes and businesses are flooded. That needs to happen right now.”
“The planning departments in the councils and in An Coimisiún Pleanála do not have enough staff. They have far more planners than they had before, but they still have nowhere near the number of planning staff that they need. I welcome the Minister of State's view that there is going to be zero tolerance of further development on flood plains in the future. The truth of the matter is that thousands of houses have been built in flood risk areas and flood plains, with the permission of the State and local authorities. As a result, the Government is responsible for the costs to the families when they see their homes flooded. We all saw cars floating in the past week in those floods. That is probably the second most expensive item of expenditure that those families will have in their lives, after the cost of their homes.”
“It is still not open and it is costing €2.25 billion. The Minister of State has to recognise that we have a critical crisis in terms of the building of infrastructure and our planning systems. It is an enormous cost financially and in terms of the services we are not receiving. It has to be fixed soon. We have to set about dealing with the vexatious objections that come from one end of the country to the other. We have to realise that Ireland is now a judicial review hot spot in terms of higher levels of judicial reviews than practically any other country. They are taking longer. Our courts are not sufficiently staffed. If the Minister of State were to physically attack someone on this side of this House today, it would take longer for him to go through the courts in this country than in practically every other European country.”
“The Minister of State mentioned 100 projects that are in planning currently. He also defended the role of the planning process. At the heart of the problem is that our planning system and licensing, permitting, tendering and judicial review systems are all demonstrably slower than in the vast majority of other European countries. They are all slower here. That means they are broken and not working in this situation. This is tearing at the fabric of society. Enniscorthy, which was a lake last week, has been waiting 25 years for a planning application. The M50 is a carpark every single day now because of the planning process difficulties in getting roads and infrastructure built. The national children's hospital was promised by 2020 for €700 million, save an asteroid hitting a planet, according to Leo Varadkar.”
“-----empathically to families who have lost everything. That has added up to a hill of beans for those families over that period of time. I accept that the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, wants to get things done. I accept his bona fides in relation this. He has been this position for a year at this point. We have to get to the root of the problem here. The construction of flood defences is drowning in bureaucracy and red tape. Many flood defence planning applications are taking 20 to 30 years, from concept to completion. Enniscorthy, Midleton, Clontarf, Galway, Sandymount and a rake of others have been waiting ten, 20, 30 years just for the planning applications to go in. The issue is that if there is not a fix for this as soon as possible, there will be enormous damage done to those areas.”
“-----in 18 months’ time, we will back in the same place, with families being inundated and hammered in this situation. We have had many years of Ministers being dispatched to floods in their top boots, splashing around in the puddles on camera for the media, nodding-----”
“I thank Deputies for their contributions to this Private Members' motion. I thank the Government for not opposing it. That is important. I thank the Labour Party for its amendment, which we are not opposing. It is a cynical, well-worn experience in this House that the Government does not oppose Private Members' motions but then simply does nothing about them. Accepting a Private Members' motion and not doing anything about it is a good way of saying "Yes" while saying "No" at the same time. That is a problem. My major worry is that the media will move on from this issue, the political system will then move on from it and-----”
“We need the State to step in in terms of those insurance policies for people who live on flood plains where the State provided the planning permission for the housing to be built. I hope the Government will support and implement this motion.”
“Another variety is required for the Department and another still may be required for the council. We need one planning application to suit every single State body. An enormous layer of bureaucracy and red tape has been built up and we are drowning in it. Real people will drown in real floods as a result if it is not sorted out. It is so frustrating. We need nature-based solutions and to help those suffering from the costs of this. A lot of the supports for floods and storms sound great when they are launched but after Storm Éowyn, people waited months and only got a third of the income they were promised at the start. Many people who own cars in flood areas do not have insurance. We see cars floating down the road but the Government will not support the costs arising from that.”
“We need to completely rebalance the hierarchy of priorities when it comes to planning applications in favour of human beings in the context of projects where life is under threat. That needs to happen. We also need to simplify planning applications. I know of planning applications that need a van to be brought to the location. There are 30,000 pages in some planning applications. Surely something will go wrong in those planning applications that will allow for a judicial review. A smart solicitor only needs to find one line on one page that is out of kilter to be able to hold a judicial review to slow the whole process. I also know that there are three or four different varieties of planning application. One variety is required for licensing or a particular permitting organisation.”
“We need to reform the planning system to exclude vexatious planning objections. If you are building a slatted shed in Cork, people in Donegal can put in objections, despite the fact that they have no material or geographical interest. They can submit vexatious objections that can total the whole process forever. That needs to come to an end. We also need to ensure that we have a balance in this situation. Right now, we have special areas of conservation, SACs, and habitat directives. They are important and fulfil a particular role. The pearl mussel in Enniscorthy is an important part of biodiversity. However, human life is also important. Livelihoods are important.”
“Everybody will then be shocked, annoyed and stressed. Let us not do that to the people. Let us put in the work now to ensure that in two years' time this crisis does not happen again. We are looking for simple things. We want to make sure that those weather forecasts are made directly available to the people and that push notifications are put in place. We want weather stations in mountainous areas for river catchments. With regard to the planning aspects of the issue, we must ensure that Departments, county councils and An Coimisiún Pleanála are properly staffed. I know of builders whose applications for hundreds of houses have been in An Coimisiún Pleanála for 18 or 20 months. Decisions are yet to be made on those applications. The organisations that are making the planning decisions do not currently have the necessary staff.”
“It is not that a big investment is needed to make this service available to the public. It is not even that there is a technical problem with making the information available to the public. All that is needed is a bloody decision to be taken by the Government. It is incredible that the service is not available. The fact that we do not have weather stations on top of mountains in river catchment areas means we are dependent on radar to tell us the level of rain that is likely to fall in a particular area. Aontú has put forward this motion. One of the big problems in the political system is that everybody is focused on the media cycle. Flooding is going to drop off the media cycle as soon as the weather gets better and everybody here will forget about flooding for the next two or three years until there is another massive flooding crisis.”
“In 2016, the Government created a flood defence weather forecasting system. It sounded fantastic. It looked at river catchment areas and river height levels. It looked at saturation levels on the ground. That information has been available since 2016 to everybody but the taxpayers who are paying for it. Incredibly, the information is not given to the general public. It is given to the local authorities and if you are that poor, unfortunate fellow who is the water gauge in Midleton, you have to go onto the county council's website on a regular basis to get the updates. Other countries provide push notifications. People get a text to tell them that serious rainfall is likely in the local area, there is a good chance the river will overflow and they should protect life and property. That does not happen in this country.”
“We know that right now, the M50 is a car park. People are paying €200 million per year in tolls on the M50 to sit in a car park. We know that the housing crisis is going into reverse due to the lack of an ability of the Government to build. Planning, licensing, permitting, tendering and judicial reviews in this country are slower than anywhere else in the European Union. These are all areas for which the Government is responsible. These are all areas in the gift of the Government. The area of flood forecasting is even more frustrating. I listened to the news last week about what happened in Rathfarnham. People said they simply did not know it was going to happen. The first they knew of it was when they were inundated with water coming through their front doors at 5 a.m.”
“That is an absolute disgrace. There is a direct responsibility in the administration of this country for that problem. In Clontarf, it has taken 30 years from concept to completion for flood defences. In Sandymount, it has taken 20 years from concept to completion for flood defences. Flood defences were promised in Galway in 2019 but there is no word of them happening before 2034. For all those projects, the timelines will only apply if everything works perfectly. We know there are plenty of slips between the cup and the lip in these particular projects. In every single area of infrastructure, this Government is failing in delivery. We heard from Uisce Éireann at a committee recently. Its representatives said it is going to take until 2050 before the gaps in water infrastructure, which are holding back the building of houses, are filled.”
“What happens in the likes of Midleton at the moment is that an elderly gentleman stays awake in the middle of the night to watch river levels to see if the banks are going to break so he can tell the families living next to the river that their lives are in danger. In 2026 in Midleton, a human water gauge is the difference between a person losing his or her life and not. That is an incredible situation. In 2026, a planning application has not even been put into Cork County Council for flood defences for Midleton. A planning application has not even been written. Enniscorthy has been waiting for a project for 25 years. In 2014, €55 million was allocated to the flood defence scheme in Enniscorthy. The town was a lake last week. There have been 12 floods in those 25 years. A planning application has not even been written for that project.”
“This Government is allergic to accountability and measurables. It does not want a situation whereby it can be held to account on this particular issue. Let us consider some of the projects. Midleton was devastated by Storm Frank in 2015. Houses and businesses were trashed and lives were put at risk. That community was promised that flood defences would be built but nothing happened. Storm Babet hit in 2023. Some 600 homes and 300 businesses were damaged by the floods. The cost of those particular floods was €200 million. Storm Babet nearly took human life. So fast was the influx of water in some locations that people were caught in their houses and barely able to get out. Cars were floating down driveways and through estates. It is now 2026.”
“There is an anger building throughout many regions in the country at the lack of the ability of the Government to build flood defences. The dysfunction of this Government when it comes to the construction of infrastructure is putting life, limb and livelihood in severe danger across the Twenty-six Counties. It is not just about money. At the heart of this problem is gross Government incompetency to build infrastructure. Much of the country was flooded last week. The Government cannot control the weather but it can control the forecasting that happens and the flood defences that are allowed to be put in place to protect communities. Two years ago, I asked the Minister for public expenditure for a timeframe for the delivery of flood schemes throughout the country. The Minister refused to give me a timeframe. Why?”
“I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes that: — increased flooding is destroying property, causing hundreds of millions of euros of damage, and putting lives at risk; — communities are waiting, in some cases for decades, for flood defences, protection and amelioration projects to be built; — the delivery of flood defences is dangerously slow or grinding to a complete halt, with planning, licensing, permitting, tendering and the delivery of judicial reviews being slower in Ireland than in most of the European Union; — flood forecasting has been available in the State for the last 10 years, but has not been made available to the public; and — flood campaigners who have sought flood forecasts have had to contact county councils in order to get key life-saving information; and calls on the Government to: — immediately make flood forecasts available to the public through Met Éireann; — introduce push notifications for flood warnings in local areas that have a significant threat of flooding; — set up weather stations in mountain areas where the level of rainfall has a significant impact on river catchments; — adequately staff planning departments in city and county councils; — adequately staff An Coimisiún Pleanála; — reform the planning process by ensuring that vexatious planning objections are no longer allowed, and objectors who do not have a geographic or a material interest in a project should not be allowed to object to a planning application for a flood defence or flood alleviation plan where life and livelihoods are under threat; — take planning applications for flood defences and flood amelioration projects, where life and livelihoods are threatened, out of local authorities where blockages exist, and create a fast-tracked national planning process for these projects, and this will help flood defence schemes that affect numerous counties; — simplify planning applications and ensure that only one standardised planning application is necessary for all planning, permitting, licensing and regulatory authorities; — rebalance the planning process where habitat and Special Areas of Conservation planning conditions exist, in favour of protecting human life and livelihoods that are threatened by flooding; — expedite public consultations where life and livelihoods are threatened by flooding; — roll out nature-based solutions and compensate farmers upstream on river catchments to reduce flooding; — end construction on flood plains; — properly staff the court system, so that judicial reviews are dealt with in a speedy fashion; — streamline the judicial review process by removing time-consuming procedures; and — review the lack of financial supports for those who cannot get insurance for cars and other costly possessions with a view to supporting these families.”
“When we raised it, the Government turned its face against it, even though there is massive evidence that children are being distorted by this material and are being led to assaults in relation to it. We need to make sure that we look at the whole swathe of Internet content that is having significant negative effects on the minds of our young children.”
“Others refused to give information about how many children are using their services and have admitted to refusing to building in the necessary safety to the design. Grok is not alone in the production of this material. Merlio AI, Soulgen, nudify-online, undress AI, DreamGF, deepnude.cc, Promptchan AI and Candy.ai all facilitate nudification tools. One video generation tool, owned by the Chinese giant Alibaba, allows for this material to be created. It allows anybody to upload an image and do anything they like with that image. ByteDance, which is a parent company of TikTok, offers an unmoderated video generation tool as well. Six years ago, Aontú introduced a Bill looking for the banning of the provision of hardcore pornography to children.”
“Under the current two-year statute limits, the clock often expires before a tech company in California, or even Dublin, responds to a data request. Agencies such as the Data Protection Commission and Coimisiún na Meán need more than laws. They need the power and resources to enforce those laws, including the ability to fine companies into compliance. It is estimated that 6,700 sexually abusive images are produced by AI every single hour, 99% of which target women and children. Hotline.ie reported a 166% increase last year in computer-generated or computer-altered child abuse materials. Last week, the Oireachtas committee was treated very shoddily by major tech companies. X refused to appear.”
“Right now, a predator can take the face of a young girl from social media, run it through a nudification app, generate pornographic material of her and, because this image is technically a computer-generated image, the Government's current laws are not able to keep up. Rather, they ask whether it is an intimate image or a real person. While the Government's law debates the definitions, real persons get destroyed. This Bill asserts a vital truth; any of these materials are real harm. We must criminalise the actual creation of these images from the outset. We know that hotline.ie received 1,500 reports of intimate image abuse last year and only a fraction of these ever resulted in a conviction. Gardaí are fighting a digital war with their hands tied behind their back.”
“Cuirim fáilte roimh an Bille seo inniu. It addresses one of the most insidious frontiers of crime in modern Ireland. For years, we watched technology outpace our laws but today it is outpacing our own sense of human dignity. We are living in an era where nudification has become a service and predators do not even need a camera to destroy a life. All they need is an algorithm. We stood in this Chamber and spoke about Coco's Law as landmark legislation, and it was, but technology is moving fast and the Government's system is moving too slow for it. Today, we are witnessing the rise of a new industry of misery - AI-generated deepfakes.”
“We will look for a migration system in this country that is compassionate and fair but is far stricter than what we have seen so far.”
“None of the positive elements of the EU migration pact could have been entered into voluntarily by us without signing up for the pact as a whole. There is nothing about the timelines, the numbers or the reforms the Minister is making that could not have been achieved based on the democratic will of this country and without having to hand away sovereignty. Let us remember that, nine times out of ten, the decision you will make for yourself will be better than the decision your neighbour will make for you. The same applies to countries. We still have a generation that is suffering from the massive cost of the banking bailout, when 1% of the European population was made to pay 44% of the cost of the banking bailout because Europe worked in its best interest and against our interests. Aontú will oppose the Bill and push back against it.”
“Look at the situation with greenhouse gases. We are hurtling towards binding 2030 targets for emissions, with hundreds of millions of euro of fines. We handed over qualified majority voting on the Mercosur deal and a decision on our beef industry was taken on the basis of German, French and Italian interests. This is another example showing that when you hand over power from this House to Brussels, decisions are not always made in our best interests. The Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, has said that he does not believe in the old-fashioned idea of sovereignty. The current Fianna Fáil leadership is millions of miles away from the revolutionary generation of Fianna Fáilers who fought for independence in this country. There are major costs wrapped up in what we are looking at.”
“We do not know what the future holds but if we can self-determine, at least we can control the costs and the numbers in future. If we hand away sovereignty, decisions will be made in Brussels and we will not be able to determine our future contributions in relation to this matter. A question came up during an earlier debate on the Bill, which the Minister may be able to answer. Will the Council of Europe be able to change the parameters of the EU migration pact in future? Will decisions on the numbers that countries should take and contributions they will have to make in future be taken by the Council of Europe on the basis of a qualified majority vote? If so, we are stuffed because that is a blank cheque. We know exactly what it means if we hand over to the European Union the power to fine Ireland.”
“It was mentioned that we need these workers, and we do, but we also need to look at what is happening with the birth rate. In 2009, there were 75,000 births here. Last year, there were 55,000 births. If this trend continues, we are all going to be working until we are 85 and pensions are going to be reduced. There will be no balance in the demographics to be able to fund society in the future. We will have to work on that issue at some stage. The European migration pact outsources key decisions to Brussels. It reduces the ability to take sovereign democratic decisions in Ireland. It locks us into policies and decisions that will be made by other countries in their interests. It is a massive transfer of sovereignty.”
“That is an effort to frame this discussion in a way that nobody else is framing it. It is an effort to frame it as people being either pro-migration or anti-migration. That is not the discussion that is happening in households across the country. People are talking about the volume, the rate and the numbers in respect of this issue. It is important that people understand that. We have many migrants in our party, Aontú. We put many of them up for election and many of them have said they disagree with the Government's policies over the last while. They want restrictions on the numbers of people who come into the country. They want that figure to be lowered and I think they are right. We have to lower those figures if we are going to have a sustainable situation in this country into the future.”
“According to the 2022 census, 20% of the population, or 1 million people, were born outside of this country. That is a significant number. We are moving now to having 25% - we are at just under 25% - of the population of the State born outside of the country. Nobody ever speaks about that fact. It is a very high figure and it will make it difficult to have a sustainable society into the future. The European average is 13.9%, in the US it is 15% and in Britain it is 16%. We are at around 23% at the moment. This is a radical change. A Labour Party representative spoke positively in the Chamber about the contribution migrants make in Ireland. Nobody is arguing that fact. There is not one person in the country who does not say there are hundreds of thousands of migrants who are contributing with value to our society.”
“Answers to parliamentary questions I submitted show there has been a static low number of criminals removed from this country over the past number of years. There has been a little change from the Minister recently, which I welcome, but for most of those five years, that figure was static. The Minister also has the right to remove people who are not earning a living here. If people who come here have never had a job, he can remove them and send them back to another European country. That has not been done, in the main. There are hundreds of examples of European citizens living in Ireland who are dependent on social welfare and not earning a living, and Jozef Puška was a prime example of that. He did not work in this country from 2017 until the year he murdered Ashling Murphy. There has been a big change in Ireland.”
“Another issue is that the Government does not know the identity of everybody coming into the country. It is important to say that. The Government gives the impression that it does know but it does not. I know of numerous examples of the Government putting adults into Tusla accommodation for children. Whereas Garda vetting is needed to place an adult near a child, the Government has put adults into Tusla accommodation for children. We have also seen in recent court cases that some asylum seekers have presented with multiple and often contradictory identities. Some have different names, dates of birth and countries of origin. Where laws have existed, the Government has not implemented them. The Minister has the right to reduce migrants, even European migrants, if they break the law and are criminals.”
“The Government took one without talking to the community, which would have been happy if the Government had gone for the other. That created stresses and strains and significantly reduced the tourist market. In some counties, 10% of all hotel beds were taken up by IPAS. This approach made millionaires of people, cost €1.2 billion on an annual basis and got rid of planning. If I want to build a little house for my granny at the back of my house so she can live safely beside me, I have to go through planning. Why is planning good? It makes sure the local authority applies the law and it gives local people an influence over the development of society. The Government deleted planning. Aontú will bring a planning Bill to the Dáil next week, which will seek to reintroduce planning for IPAS in the future.”
“The Government is responsible for the housing crisis, without a shadow of a doubt. There is nobody else responsible for it. However, if you restrict and have a static supply of houses and raise the demand at the same time, you will increase the price of houses and rents and make houses less available to people. It is maths, economics and physics. You cannot hold supply static, raise demand and expect there to be houses for everybody and house prices or rents to remain low. In regard to IPAS, that situation is an incredible one. The Government set fires in many towns and villages in the country. It would not even talk to local communities. There were communities with hotels in one part of the town and another hotel in another part of the town.”
“If you increase the population of the country by the population of Galway city on an annual basis and you do not build the infrastructure of Galway city on an annual basis, you are going to create problems. Galway has a university, a university hospital, dozens of schools and tens of thousands of houses. If you do not keep up with that population increase in terms of infrastructure, you are going to create stresses and strains, albeit not among middle-class and wealthy people who will be able to provide for themselves. The people who will compete for the scarce resources will typically be the working-class people across the country. That is why the stresses and strains of the Government's policies have mostly been seen in working-class places over the past while. It is important that I say this.”
“If you fail the appeal, you can get a judicial review, and it will take years for your judicial review to be processed. If you fail at the judicial review, you get a deportation order, which will never be implemented. This incredible and dysfunctional situation created by the Government costs billions of euro, creates turmoil across the country and nobody is ever held to account for it. We have had a significant increase in the number of people coming into the country claiming asylum. The figure has been in or around 18,000 per year for many years. In terms of work permits, the figure is about 40,000 per year and in terms of student visas, there are about 60,000 people coming in every year. There is also a significant number of people coming in from Ukraine.”
“We had a situation where tens of thousands of people were coming into the country and spending years having their applications processed. We had to pay for their accommodation. Some 80% of those applications were going to fail, but we can take that figure down to 60% because some of those who appeal have the initial failure overturned. Some 60% of the people who spent years in accommodation in Ireland were not asylum seekers but we were paying €1.2 billion for their accommodation. That is an incredible situation for any Government to allow over that period of time. The Government sent out a message that if you come to Ireland, you can apply and it will take years for your application to be processed. If your application fails, you can apply for appeal and it will take years for your appeal to be processed.”
“We asked how many people were failing in the application process. At that time, about 30% of people were failing their first application. We realised there was something wrong and the Government was not being strict enough with regard to its tests for those applications. We were proved right because 80% of people who apply are now failing their first application. There has been a massive jump from about 30% to 80% in two or three years. What happened? Was it the case that we had a different cohort of people coming to this country or was it that the Government was simply not testing properly in relation to the people coming into the country three or four years ago? Is it the case that the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, is testing properly, and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, was not?”
“People who had to get on a flight in another European country simply did not have their document available when they landed. I asked how many people were being deported and was informed that only about 5% of the individuals subject to deportation orders had their deportations enforced. I asked how many were deported in another fashion and the Minister said that some of those people were being deported voluntarily. When I asked how many the Minister was sure had left, she said she did not know and that there were no exit checks. We do not check if people leave the country or not. I asked the Minister why there are no exit checks and she said it is because we have a Border with the North of Ireland. We cannot have exit checks in Ireland if we have an open Border between North and South.”
“Our engagement with British politicians has highlighted to them that there is a flow of migrants from the South into the North and Britain. It is in London's and Ireland's best interests, as good neighbours, to have a good fence to be able to understand where people are moving. If people want to come from Britain to Ireland, North or South, they should apply for asylum at the airport or port they land at on the island of Ireland. It is the only way to manage the movement of people in Ireland. I submitted parliamentary questions asking how many people were coming to Ireland without passports or travel documents. The Government stated that in 2023, 5,000 people landed in Dublin Airport without a passport or travel document. That is an incredible situation.”
“It took three years of questioning for the Minister, Deputy McEntee, to admit that 85% of the population coming into the country were coming from Britain through the North of Ireland. It is an incredible situation. The EU migration pact, which we are discussing today, does not fix that problem. A person can fly from Liverpool into Belfast currently without a passport and without seeking asylum. There is obviously never going to be a border between North and South. It is impossible, it is not wanted and it would not be able to function. The logical conclusion is to put in an Irish Sea border for the movement of people. People said the unionists would not accept it. Unionists have accepted an Irish Sea border for the movement of goods. They were forced to do so under the Windsor Framework.”
“When I went back to the Minister, Deputy McEntee, at the time and asked where the people applying for asylum in Mount Street were coming from, she said she did not know. It is incredible that an individual who was being well paid - €180,000 a year - to do a job did not even have the curiosity to find out where people applying for asylum in Ireland were coming from. Six months later, I asked again where people were coming from and whether the Minister was asking the question as to where they are coming from. She said they were not asking them where they were coming from. That is an incredible situation. Six months later, I put in another question. The Minister admitted then that she was asking the question but at that stage, she said the information was not being collated in a fashion that would enable her to give us that information.”
“There is a political bubble where people are not able to listen to the people they are meant to represent and who are caught up in a peer pressure in which they do not have the backbone to be able to speak with their own intellect and moral compasses. Look at what happened over that period of time. I put in a parliamentary question to the previous Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, approximately four years ago, asking where most people were registering for asylum in this country. That parliamentary question showed 85% registered at the International Protection Office in Mount Street. I scratched my head wondering why people were registering for asylum in Mount Street when they were coming through ports and airports.”
“Sinn Féin flipped in large part because it was run from the doors in its working class heartlands across this country on this particular issue. However, there are still four other political parties in this Chamber who do not think we even have the right to have a debate. With People Before Profit, any individual action taken by the Minister to ameliorate some of the difficulties here led to name calling, association with Trump, and looking to show this individual as an extreme individual. Do not shut down democratic debate. It was incredible that for four years the vast majority of people in all polling companies' polls were saying they wanted a stricter immigration system, and one political party, the smallest in Leinster House, Aontú, was the only one actually articulating that view. That is quite an incredible situation to happen.”
“We stated that if we do not have a respectful conversation in this country, the conversation is not going to disappear. It will simply get pushed underground to the ne'er-do-wells who will use people's concerns for their own negative benefit. That is exactly what has happened over the past six years. The inability of the political establishment to reflect the concerns of Irish citizens across the country has pushed hundreds of thousands of individuals into the ecosystem of some of the most extreme people in Irish society. This was a major mistake by this Government. As it happens, we have seen that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have flipped on this issue in the past couple of years. I welcome that.”