This long overdue Bill is a very significant improvement on the Bill brought before us by the previous Government in 1994. It bears saying that the last Bill proved unsatisfactory. My colleague Deputy Shatter, in particular, set out the ways in which the Bill was inadequate and with party colleagues he put down a series of amendments. I am glad they met with a relatively open attitude from the then Government parties and a fair measure of agreement had been reached on the improvements needed.
I am delighted the Government has taken the sensible view and, instead of proceeding with an inadequate Bill which was in the process of being amended, decided it was better to sit down and start from scratch and produce a much more comprehensive and satisfactory Bill to deal with a series of very important issues raised during the debate on the 1994 Bill. I was glad the former Government took an open attitude to the amendments but this Bill represents the first real breakthrough in the way we think about our obligations to refugees and approach the definition of their status, the conclusion of their cases and the entitlements that we should grant to people who come here as refugees. It was clearly unsatisfactory, as Deputy Broughan said, that our arrangements for dealing with refugees were on an administrative basis from the day we acceded to the 1951 UN Convention, back in November 1956. That begs a great many questions and one could ask why we took that particular route at the time. It is worth dwelling on that for a moment.
In 1956 a refugee problem without parallel from the end of the Second World War arose in Europe with the uprising in Hungary of that year and its repression by the Soviet regime. It would be too painful to go into some aspects of that, but the countries of the western world, including ourselves, distinguished themselves by their inactivity and moral cowardice in the face of that repression. I was old enough then to remember clearly the emotions felt by a great many people in our country. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I came to understand in full the utter futility of the high moral tone of the so-called principle that lay behind the doctrine of neutrality. I will not go into that; Members of the House know my views very well on that issue. In the last few weeks I have heard colleagues looking back to that time and criticising the policy adopted by the Government of the day and inveighing against the fact that all it did was to look for surplus Army huts in which to house refugees. Numbers of refugees at that time were housed in locations around Shannon in Nissan huts. However, I would not like it to be left unchallenged on the record as if that were a dishonourable thing to have done at the time. In 1956 Ireland was still in the middle of a depression, and there was no way in which any substantial number of adequate housing units could have been built in the kind of time that was available then to meet the crisis. On that occasion, at least in so far as the treatment of refugees was concerned, this country reacted rather well. Even if we had reacted badly in common with all the other nations of the then West, apart from praying at Mass for the conversion of Russia, we had reacted very badly to what happened in the streets of Budapest at that time.
I have heard colleagues criticising what was done in 1956. Those same colleagues did not have a lot to say in 1969, nor have they said anything since about the business of providing tents at Gormanston and field hospitals along the Border to deal with people who felt themselves to be refugees from Northern Ireland at the time. We should look back on these things with a little more deliberation than is sometimes the case.
That is all divergence from what I set out to say. It was unsatisfactory that for so long, almost 40 years, our policy in relation to refugees remained purely on an administrative basis. I know that the administrative policy we adopted was declared by our courts properly to be a binding policy but it is, of course, far better to have these things set down in law, properly codified, so that the people who have to come to us looking for a welcome, looking for a home in our country, know their rights and entitlements and so that the people here who are charged with receiving those people and adjudicating on their cases can have both the benefit and the discipline of a clear set of statutory principles, a clear set of provisions in law for dealing with the applications made.
Now we will have a clear basis of law when this Bill is enacted. It sets out the rights of applicants, the protections that are to be granted to them and the assistance that is to be afforded to them when they look for that protection. I am particularly pleased that this Bill includes a provision for a refugee appeals board so that we can be sure, as far as that is ever possible in life, that justice will have been done in specific cases. That will be a very important provision in the future because there is no area of the law, as far as I know, where we can always be sure that things will be properly done the first time round. Even if we can be 99 per cent certain that justice will be done if we apply the provisions of our law, it is very wise and necessary, to provide for an appeals procedure.
I note that in this Bill there is a section 12 to deal with manifestly unfounded appeals, and these come up from time to time. I remember one particular case about which there was not a great deal of talk at the time. It was the case of a young gentleman from a country to the west of us, which I will not name for diplomatic reasons, who was returning home from a country to the east of us, which I will not name either —it has disappeared since. He applied to be taken in here as a refugee. On examination of his case we found that the reason he wanted to be taken in here as a refugee was that in the country where he had been and training as a mechanic in a tractor factory, what I suppose one would call a certain kind of rudimentary night life was available, and he did not look forward to the prospect of going back to his own factory where, as he said, there was no Coca-Cola, hamburgers or night life. He was quite rightly put on a plane again at Shannon and continued on his merry way. I do not know what happened to him after he got to that country. There are colleagues here who seem to be very friendly with the regime in that country, but I do not think any of them ever followed up that particular case. I have not heard that he was subjected to any great discrimination after he went back home.
I am very glad also that in this Bill a provision is made to extend the family reunification provisions that have been in our practices up to now. I can imagine, having spoken to a number of people, both refugees and people who have been dealing with them, that the question of family reunification can often be one of very great concern for people who, after all, are forced to flee their native countries. Of course, things do not always happen neatly, and one can never be sure that all of the members of a family will find themselves able to move out of the country that they are forced to leave at the same time or all together. Given the strength of family ties, it is a cause of great distress to a great many people if they cannot be sure at least that they know where the other members of their family are and then if they cannot bring about a situation where those members of the family who want to be reunited can be brought back together again. I am glad that provisions to deal with that problem are included in this Bill. It is a very important advance in the provisions we will have in force.
It is one of our common habits to pat ourselves on the back and remind ourselves from time to time what a great little country we are. We are not that great when it comes to dealing with refugees. We behaved very honourably in 1956. We behaved with some honour and credit in relation to refugees from Vietnam and in individual cases elsewhere, but we have not really done an awful lot. I am not criticising any particular Government when I say this. We do not know the real extent of refugee problems. There are other countries which we are inclined to look down on from our superior moral position of neutrality that have done much more than we have to help refugees who have been forced to leave their native countries for one reason or another, particularly in recent years. For example, the reunfied Federal Republic of Germany has done more than any other European state for refugees. I am not sure that a great many people in this country realise just what an enormous contribution Germany has made to dealing with the refugee problem, one that was very present, very close to its own borders even before the new opening up in Central and Eastern Europe and one that is still there given its proximity to the former Yugoslavia. Sweden, which has a different type of neurtrality, and even France have done much more for refugees and have been much more liberal in admitting them than we have. Proportionately, our ancient enemy across the water has also done a great deal more for them. I am not criticising any Government in this regard. It is not in our national psyche to understand the full extent of the refugee problem.
Section 3 provides for an extension of certain rights to refugees. This does not simply put in statutory form a practice that already exists, rather it reinforces and extends the rights of refugees. If I understand it correctly, the purpose of section 3 is to grant refugees the rights enjoyed by Irish citizens in respect of employment, the exercise of a profession and access to social welfare benefits as defined in the social welfare and health Acts. I welcome that provision and hope it will assist those refugees who are here and others who may come in future.
There have been complaints about the non-availability of some necessary services for refugees, such as trauma counselling, when they arrive on our shores. Many Members heard the eloquent presentation in that regard to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and at other venues. The circumstances in which many refugees are forced to leave their homes give an inkling of the strong case to be made for such counselling. A meeting of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs recently heard details of a particular case.
In 1956 many Hungarians had to leave their homes. Members of their families had disappeared, were killed or imprisoned. In recent times those forced to leave the former Yugoslavia because of their religious beliefs must be deeply traumatised. Others survived ethnic cleansing and saw family members being killed, tortured or put into camps. Many of them may never know what happened to close relatives. Such cases should move us to compassion and we can understand the distress of those affected. In areas of conflict families are scattered to different countries and many have to stand by and watch years of work literally go up in smoke.
Under the Bill refugees will be granted the same entitlements as Irish citizens to health and social welfare services and we must ensure resources are distributed fairly. While I accept it is outside the remit of the Bill, we should endeavour to obviate the need for people to become refugees in the first place.
