I wish to share my time with Deputies Jim Higgins and Gormley.
Private Members' Business. - Confidence in Minister: Motion.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I move:
That Dáil Éireann, deploring:
–the total inadequacy of his policy on asy lum seekers, which has been described by a Minister of State in the Government as a "doom-laden ad hoc policy”, “chaos” and “a shambles”;
–his failure to ensure that adequate procedures are in place to allow applications for asylum to be processed effectively and efficiently and the consequent hardship caused to many applicants;
–his failure to bring forward any comprehensive immigration policy;
–his action in officially opening Clover Hill Prison and the Mountjoy Women's Prison when neither of these jails were in a position to take inmates due to serious flaws in the construction process;
–the continued overcrowding in prisons, particularly in Mountjoy Prison where almost twice the official numbers have, on recent occasions, been detained overnight;
–the death of five prisoners in apparent suicides in prisons since the beginning of 1999;
–the renewed spate of armed robberies;
–the failure to provide adequate protection for communities continuing to suffer severe problems from crime and vandalism;
–the ongoing industrial relations and morale problems in the Garda Síochána;
–the unacceptable waiting lists for appointments with solicitors at legal aid centres, which in some cases have increased to almost two years;
–his failure to deal with the shortages of resources and over-heavy workload in the Chief State Solicitor's office, which were identified by the Director of Public Prosecutions as having contributed to errors made in the prosecution of the Nora Wall case; and
–his failure to introduce necessary legislation to regulate the private security industry,
has no confidence in the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
Moving a motion of no confidence in a Minister is a most serious matter. Short of tabling a motion of no confidence in the Government itself, it is probably the most serious step an Opposition party can take. It is not a step that should be taken lightly, casually or without sufficient justification. In the case of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue, I am satisfied that this motion is well merited and many Government Deputies, and not just those in the Progressive Democrats, believe it is well justified.
It is my intention to judge the performance of the Minister solely on the basis of the criteria and standards he himself set down. His period in office since July 1997 has been characterised by a sequence of failed policies and broken promises. When in Opposition, Deputy O'Donoghue was merciless in his criticism of those in power for any failures, however minor, in regard to justice, prisons or policing issues. There was hardly a corner shop robbery during that period that did not lead to a call for the then Minister to give the House an explanation. More serious crimes led to regular calls for ministerial resignations.
On the Order of Business, during Question Time and in Private Members' time he denounced any perceived policy shortcoming, demanded accountability and did not accept any excuses. The law according to Deputy O'Donoghue when in Opposition was that the buck stopped with the Minister and that the Minister had to accept political responsibility for every armed robbery, prison escape and failed prosecution. In Opposition, Deputy O'Donoghue was the man with all the answers and all the solutions. In Government, however, his record as Minister shows that he has feet of clay.
I have no doubt that the people who work in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, from the Secretary General down, are individually fine, decent, sympathetic and hardworking people. However, there is little doubt that the Department, as an institution, is one of the most conservative in the State. It requires a politician of exceptional character and strength to break free from the influence of the Department and to ensure that it is the Minister's agenda that is pursued, and not the conservative, narrow agenda of the Department. The Minister has proven himself unable to fulfil this task.
The previous Government forced the Refugee Act on a reluctant Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The Department dragged its feet in terms of the implementation of the Act until there was a change of Government. One of the first things Deputy O'Donoghue did when he took office was to announce that the Refugee Act was effectively being shelved.
Nothing illustrates the total transformation of Deputy O'Donoghue from Opposition to Government more than his attitude towards the position of asylum seekers. Speaking in this House in October 1995, Deputy O'Donoghue, then Fianna Fáil spokesperson on justice, said:
The status of refugees is an issue which should strike a chord with every man, woman and child here who has any grasp of Irish history, our history books being littered with the names and deeds of those driven from our country out of fear of persecution.
I could quote many other fine sentiments expressed by Deputy O'Donoghue when in Opposition in which he called for a more caring and sympathetic approach to asylum seekers. However, now that he is safely in power and when he has the opportunity to do something about this issue, his approach is characterised by a lack of sympathy or understanding, and is noticeably short on compassion.
Anyone who has taken the time to talk to asylum seekers and illegal immigrants will know that, at its core, this is a human problem. The constant reality for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers is the fear facing those who have sought refuge in our country, the uncertainty of their circumstances, the inability to make plans for the future, their status in a virtual legal limbo, the terror of being deported back to the jurisdiction from which they fled and, increasingly, the verbal and physical abuse they receive from the small minority of racists in our society.
Unfortunately, the Minister seems to see this problem primarily through the eyes of the bureaucrat or the accountant. The preoccupation is with figures on a balance sheet, the potential cost, the gross numbers, the need for effective administrative procedures and neat solutions to deal with the problem. If we have learned anything it surely should be that problems involving human beings cannot be dealt with in a rigid, unyielding and inflexible way.
It is wrong to suggest that Ireland is being asked to carry a disproportionate share of the refugee problem in Europe. Even if one assumes that the figure of 8,156 applications for asylum in Ireland is correct, and many people believe that there is an element of double accounting in this number, it is still far below the level experienced by most of our fellow members of the EU. There were 45,000 applications in Holland last year, 57,000 in Britain and almost 100,000 in Germany. Belgium, a country with six times as many inhabitants per square kilometre as Ireland, received around 22,000 applications for asylum last year.
In light of these figures, those like Deputies Callely and Noel Ahern, who imply that this country is in some way being overrun by asylum seekers, are grossly overstating the scale of the problem, unnecessarily creating fear and fanning the flames of intolerance. It is true that, unlike most of our European neighbours, there has been little or no tradition of refugees seeking asylum in Ireland. It is a relatively new phenomenon, but it is a manageable challenge for us to reach and solve. In particular, there is no excuse for the organisation and administrative failures that have, in recent weeks, seen asylum seekers treated in a deplorable manner, or for the failure of the Government to develop in two and a half years a coherent and humane over-arching immigration policy.
The Irish are a predominantly humane and tolerant people and I believe that the great majority have been shocked not just by the appalling scenes that have been witnessed at the refugee application centre in Mount Street over the past two weeks, but also by the increasingly harsh and intolerant tone that has come to characterise public pronouncements by senior Ministers on this issue in recent times.
Irrespective of the economic status of people arriving here or their nationality, skin colour or ethnic background, they are entitled to be treated by the institutions of State with courtesy, respect and dignity. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has failed to ensure that those seeking asylum in the State are treated in an acceptable manner. I do not blame the staff at the refugee application centre who have been working under intolerable conditions for some time. Indeed, in many respects it was the decision of the staff to take action that finally forced the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, to acquire additional accommodation and provide some extra staff, although it is clear from the continuing problems that not enough is being done.
Prior to coming into the House I was informed that negotiations between the unions and negotiators on behalf of the Minister have broken down. The level of service provided as of now for asylum seekers and those seeking support at the Minister's much vaunted one stop shop is very much in doubt.
The Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue must take responsibility for allowing a situation to develop last week that frankly besmirched the good name of the country. The Minister has been in office since July 1997 and it is time he stopped blaming the previous Administration and accepted that he has failed utterly to do what is needed. Two and a half years after the Minister came into office promising to end the delays in processing applications for asylum, we had the appalling spectacle of men, women and children queuing from as early as 5 a.m. for hours with nowhere to sit or shelter from the weather, without even the most basic toilet facilities, only to be turned away and told that no service was available at the office. As we speak, this situation is ongoing. Despite the pressure of recent days the Minister has proved unable to deal with this basic problem.
If these scenes were not bad enough, the atmosphere has been further inflamed by a series of harsh and intolerant pronouncements by Ministers. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, in a phrase that will be music to the ears of the minority in the country who are racist, recently spoke on RTE about the country being "swamped" by asylum seekers. On "Questions & Answers" last week the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, suggested that the problem, as he categorised it, had been solved by June or July of this year and blamed the Government decision in July to allow employers employ asylum seekers as attracting more to enter the country. Since the Government decision of last July just 15 work permits have been issued to employers to take on asylum seekers. This must be considered in the context of the thousands of asylum seekers in the country. In Wexford, my home town, there are 215 asylum seekers, only four of whom have received permits to work, despite the fact that the bulk of them are skilled and able and are most anxious to work. I can give details of individuals who have been allowed work, who have been welcomed into paid employment and have proved a huge asset to the companies in which they work.
The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, quite correctly described the Government's approach to dealing with asylum seekers as "doom laden", "ad hoc” and “a shambles”. Nowhere is the shambles more obvious or the ad hoc nature of the policy more evident than in relation to the question of work permits for asylum seekers. The refusal to allow asylum seekers to work is a form of double discrimination. It discriminates against them by preventing asylum seekers from playing a constructive role in society and by compelling them to remain on what is generally regarded as a subsistence level of income.
Later this week the House will begin debating the Human Rights Commission Bill. It is worth recalling that Article 23 of the universal declaration on human rights says that everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, just and favourable conditions of work and protection against unemployment. The State is failing in its obligations under Article 23 in regard to those from outside the EU who find themselves in Ireland. With my colleagues in the Labour Party I have long urged that the law be changed to allow asylum seekers to work, as is the case in most other European countries. Reform in this area was vigorously opposed by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and his Department.
When it was announced in July, following another prolonged dispute between the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, and the Progressive Democrats, that regulations were being changed to allow asylum seekers work after they had spent 12 months here, there were grounds for optimism and hope that a more humane and practical approach would finally be put in place. However, the scheme is so limited and restrictive as to be practically useless. Those who opposed the move in the first place have clearly been successful in frustrating any meaningful reform. An asylum seeker must first find a potential employer. The employer must then apply for a work permit to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. That process can take a month or more, and a fee is payable, ranging from £25 for a one month permit to £125 for a five to 12 months permit, a year being the maximum time for which a permit will be issued. Employers also have to show that they made reasonable efforts to have the job filled by an Irish national or an EU citizen. Is it any wonder, given these bureaucratic contingencies, that so few permits have been sought and issued? Blame for this ludicrous situation must be shared by the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, and the Tánaiste who has direct responsibility for employment matters.
Of course, it has to be acknowledged that a considerable number of those who are seeking asylum will not qualify as refugees. They are economic migrants who fled the dire economic conditions of their own country, just as hundreds of thousands of Irish people have done down through the years. It is a sobering thought for the Government and the House to think that just ten years ago there were well in excess of 100,000 Irish illegals in the United States. These were people who left this country and took the risk of entering the United States illegally, not because they were subject to religious, racial or political discrimination, but because this country could not at that time offer them a decent living. At that time there were pleas from Deputies in every party urging the US authorities to treat Irish illegals humanely and allow them to stay – in most cases, they were allowed stay. I am quite sure there were constituents from south Kerry among the Irish illegals in the United States at that time and I would be astonished if, as a backbencher or chairman of Kerry County Council, the current Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform did not make representations to the US authorities to give constituents the legal right to remain in the US.
It is time to review our approach to asylum seekers and to devise a totally new immigration policy that takes account not just of the needs of our economy and labour force, but also of our obligations to the wider world, especially to those who are not as well fed or as comfortable as the majority of our citizens. We need to find a way to regularise the position of those already here. We need to urgently develop a new immigration policy which will help address the labour shortages that already exist and which will, according to virtually every economist in the land, increase in years to come. One forecast over the weekend suggested that we would need 160,000 immigrants over the next seven years if the targets set out in the national plan were to be met. It seems, based on newspaper reports over the past few days, that the Government is at last beginning to address that issue. The intensified debate and the tabling of this motion by the Opposition have no doubt concentrated the minds of Ministers, but it would be shameful if our immigration policy focused on cherry picking skilled or semi-skilled personnel from less developed countries to meet our economic needs. It must be a strong humanitarian-based policy.
In my contribution I have concentrated on the Minister's record in one area for which he has responsibility, but as I said at the outset, his record has been a chapter of disasters. Other Members will deal in more detail with these issues. I will conclude by making a few remarks. New prisons have been opened but remain unoccupied and there has been a substantial rise in crime. All these would have been cause for the Minister to demand the resignation of his predecessor. At the end of the debate, Members opposite will either support this resolution of no confidence in the Minister – I believe the majority in the House does not have confidence in him – or they will share collective responsibility and stand over the policies. That remark and call will lie heaviest on the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell. She has talked the talk and we will see at the end of the debate whether she will walk the walk.
(Mayo): The timing of this motion is opportune. Seldom has the competence of a Minister to manage his brief been so seriously called into question. Seldom have so many different elements and sections of a Ministry been found wanting or malfunctioning simultaneously as the arrangements under the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy O'Donoghue. Justice, Equality and Law Reform is one of the central planks of a stable, safe and organised society. Fine Gael supports this motion because, as Deputy Howlin said, the buck stops firmly with the Minister.
This was the binding principle set down by the Minister when in Opposition. If something went wrong in the courts, as in the Judge Dominic Lynch case, the responsibility lay politically with the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. If a bank raid occurred, even if the Minister was only a matter of days in office, as in the case of the Brinks-Allied raid, the Minister was answerable and culpable.
It is this Minister, therefore, who must shoulder responsibility for a prison system that is in chaos, a courts system that undermines public confidence in itself by glaringly inconsistent sentencing policies, a Garda force where there are constant and major industrial relations problems and disgruntlement fuelled by the Minister because of the manner in which he heightened Garda expectations during his two and a half year rant in Opposition. Add to that the indecision on refugees and asylum seekers, delays and U-turns in dealing with the liquor licensing laws and the failure to introduce legislation to regulate the private security industry, the Fraud Offences Bill, the Prevention of Corruption Bill, the Sex Offenders Registration Bill, the Criminal Law Insanity Bill and the Prison Services Bill. One can see the reason public perception of the Minister's performance is of dismal failure.
I do not say this off the top of my head. What we are doing by supporting the motion is giving political expression to a widespread perception that the Minister is simply not up to the job. Indeed, much of the media criticism and analysis of the Minister is delivered in far less charitable or restrained terms by political commentators than those of Deputy Howlin and myself. A large part of the public disillusionment at the Minister's performance derives from the fact that, for two and a half years in Opposition, he ranted and raved in his daily tirade against the rainbow Government.
No recognition was given for achievement. No credit was given for the drug trafficking legislation which has been responsible for putting so many drugs barons behind bars or forcing them into exile with their hitherto untouchable empires in tatters. No credit was given for establishing the Criminal Assets Bureau which has seized almost £7 million in money and ill-gotten property and which has systematically tackled the problem of money laundering. No credit was given for the establishment of the Garda national drugs unit in July 1995 or the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigations, or for commencing, after ten years of stagnation, a prison building programme of 840 additional prison spaces in St. Patrick's institution, Castlerea special unit, The Curragh, Limerick, Portlaoise, Castlerea main prison and Wheatfield. No credit was given for amending the bail laws which the Minister has since failed to implement, introducing the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Persons Act, 1997, dealing with the new phenomenon of syringe attacks making additional judicial appointments and streamlining court procedures, where the delays for litigants in obtaining a court date in civil cases in the Dublin Circuit Court was reduced from two years to six weeks and in family law cases where the delay was reduced from 16 months to four months. No credit was given for the automated fingerprinting identification system which reduced the number of man hours required to identify fingerprints from 500 hours to ten minutes.
As spokesman for his party in Opposition, the Minister could not get his seal of office quickly enough. Zero tolerance would be the order of the day. All crime, major and petty, would be punished and stamped out. In spite of the ridicule poured on his zero tolerance philosophy by the Garda Commissioner and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, this was going to be the Minister's credo in Government. This was the yardstick by which he would be judged and by which he wanted to be measured. Since then we have heard little if anything from the Minister about zero tolerance apart from his obsession with the prison incarceration binge to which he is totally committed. Thankfully, by and large, zero tolerance has been quietly abandoned and debunked.
Nobody denies that justice, equality and law reform is a difficult portfolio. The Minister, however, has foundered badly among the myriad of challenges which are the lot of Ministers for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. He has failed to meet or cope with the challenges, to see many of the challenges as opportunities and to embrace the new enlightened thinking which urges penal reform instead of adding more prison spaces to an already failed and chaotic system. He refuses to take on board the recommendations of the Whitaker Committee, the Management of Offenders – A Five Year Plan, Tackling Crime – Discussion Paper, commissioned by his Department, or the research carried out by the Irish Penal Reform Trust, which urge a range of viable alternatives to the Minister's preoccupation with locking up people.
Last December the Crime Forum report commissioned by the Minister produced the most damning denunciation of his prison policy. I will confine myself to four brief quotations: "most people accept that imprisonment should be a last resort"; "we imprison more people, especially young people, than most countries"; "sexual violence and exploitation in prison is a serious problem"; and "prison is an expensive and potentially damaging option to be used with care".
How can any Parliament vote confidence in a Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who presides over a prison system which is the most costly in the world, has more prison officers than prisoners, is infested with drugs, neither deters nor rehabilitates, where 2,500 of the 10,000 who pass through it each year are jailed for non-payment of fines, where 50 per cent of the prison population serve sentences of less than three months, where prison officers are paid up to £40,000 in overtime each year and where it costs £52,000 just to keep a prisoner in jail for one year?
How can a Parliament vote confidence in a Minister who is responsible for a situation where only 20 out of 300 sex offenders in jail receive intensive therapy or treatment? How can the House have confidence in a Minister who officially opened a £26 million prison at Clover Hill on 1 July last and which, five and a half months later, is still empty because the security doors do not work, the fire alarm triggers off false alarms, the floors have to be relaid, the computer system is not working and the electric wiring is dangerous? Similarly, the women's prison officially opened by the Minister is still not functional.
Two prisoners have escaped.
(Mayo): Perhaps the reason the Minister clings stubbornly to his failed prison policy is that he sees it as the last residue of his discredited zero tolerance philosophy. Perhaps he sees the “lock them up” policy as the hard man, macho Minister image. Is this the reason he is determined to carry on regardless and add 1,000 more prison spaces, at a cost of £100 million, and 1,000 more prison officers, at an annual cost of £25 million, to an already failed and chaotic system? Imagine the positive results that would accrue if the Minister invested a fraction of this cost in enhancing the probation and welfare service, developing more community service orders, restorative justice, more juvenile diversion programmes, training courses for vulnerable youngsters and sheltered accommodation for vulnerable females and vulnerable young males released from prison.
One of the problems with this Minister is his inability to come to terms with his lack of performance and to do something positive to address his deficiencies. From the outset of his term as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the Minister has displayed an unenviable ability to get things wrong. In November 1997, five men were detained by gardaí in Tallaght for possession of £3 million worth of cannabis. The men had to be released because the District Court judge who extended their period of detention had not been a nominated judge for the purpose of the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Act. The matter was raised in the House by Opposition Deputies, including myself. The Minister strode in here, in his usual hands-in-pockets fashion, with no file, no proper information, no answers, no explanation and no apology. He got a hammering and took a well deserved battering. Three of the men were re-arrested but then had to be re-released because the judge on that occasion ruled that they could not be re-arrested for the same offence. Again, the Minister was brought before the House and delivered another less than impressive performance and again he refused to accept responsibility for the debacle.
The most sensational judicial controversy in the history of the State saw a Supreme Court judge, a High Court judge and a county registrar resign from office. The Chief Justice's report on the Sheedy affair is a damning indictment of the involvement of both judges in the case. Instead of demanding a full explanation as to why two senior judicial figures did what they did, the Minister introduced a Judicial Pensions Bill which was forced through this House, against the will of the Opposition, and which awarded both former judges pensions of £40,000 and £30,000 respectively. The taxpayer, who is paying the piper, was left without answers or explanation.
One of the features of the Minister's Opposition tactics was to meet, empathise with and heighten the expectations of various sectoral interests. We vividly recall the Garda march on the Dáil in support of pay demands during the period of office of the Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left coalition Government. Having been so eagerly greeted at the gates of Leinster House by Deputy O'Donoghue and his colleagues, the Garda must have had an expectation that it would receive a positive response once the Deputy became a Minister. The Deputy became Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and there followed the blue flu, an unprecedented two day withdrawal of Garda labour where the safety of the State and its citizens was left fully exposed.
There is now another stand-off in which the Minister is at loggerheads with the Garda. This time, the multi-million pound PULSE IT system lies paralysed because a further productivity stalemate has arisen. Like the blue flu, one can only wonder why this issue was not addressed in time. Why was it allowed to go over the brink? Why was the looming difficulty not foreseen and forestalled? Why did the Minister not take the initiative and instruct his officials to get involved in meaningful negotiations instead of dilly-dallying about whether talks would be official or unofficial? All the indications now are that positions are becoming even more polarised as a result of the Minister's weekend utterances.
During the past year, the Minister allowed the long-running dispute between his Department and the Office of the Chief State Solicitor to go to the wire, with cases in Limerick being dismissed. An interim report of the expert group on the probation and welfare service, established by the Minister, recommended the immediate appointment of 43 additional welfare officers to underpin the hopelessly overwhelmed welfare service. Surprise, surprise, the Minister refused. Another crisis, another stand-off, another withdrawal of labour and, finally, the Minister again backed down at the eleventh hour, grudgingly accepting the proposals of the group he had established.
On 25 January 1998, The Sunday Business Post carried an article entitled “Crackdown on Security Criminals”. A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform informed the paper that proposals for new legislation were to be published “within the next two weeks”. Almost two years later, in spite of a report from a working group established by Deputy Nora Owen when she served as Minister, pleas from the private security industry and repeated queries to the Taoiseach on the Order of the Business, there is still no sign of the Bill. It is another pathetic failure.
An Action Programme for the Millennium promised to increase Garda numbers to 12,000. Two and a half years later, the Minister is 700 short of that figure. He promised a statutory independent prisons authority. Two and a half years later, there is no sign of the legislation aside from another ad hoc arrangement having been put in place. A fast-track system was to be introduced for certain categories of offences, whatever these were supposed to be. Again, that has been either forgotten or abandoned.
A drug court system was to be set up, an excellent idea, but there is still no sign of it. The Minister guaranteed he would establish a custodial detention centre for convicted addicts and remand prisoners who are addicted, with all other prisons to be drug free. Not alone do we not have the specially designated drug treatment prison but there are drugs in most prisons and there is a fair guarantee that many of those who enter prison drug free will exit drug dependent.
Once upon a time a murder would have automatically been a front page news item, but that is no longer the case. Gangland killings are the order of the day. Rape and other sexual offences have increased by 30 per cent. The number of women and children fleeing their homes has increased by 35 per cent to almost 5,000 this year. If one takes the past four weeks as a microcosm of the Minister's performance, it is a damning judgment of a man who promised so much but has delivered so little. There were three bank raids in Dublin alone at Dublin Airport, Finglas and Tallaght; three tragic prisons suicides, two in Mountjoy and one in Wheatfield; two officially opened but as yet unopened prisons; a rap on the knuckles from the Swedish authorities for failing to reply, after 18 months, to urgent inquiries about money laundering; the taxpayer was landed with a bill for unspecified compensation paid to an honest and innocent individual from Sligo who was hauled before the court and wrongly accused of stealing a wallet which he had found; a high profile drugs case was thrown out of court because of inadequate Garda evidence; and pictures of "Ireland of the welcomes", with the bolted doors of the one stop shop at Lower Mount Street flashed around the world and hundreds of applicants for asylum standing outside.
Any self-respecting Minister would not have waited for tonight's motion. He would have looked at his performance, taken the honest and obvious course of action and left.
There is one prisoner in this country for whom we can have little sympathy. He is not imprisoned against his will but entirely voluntarily. He is not imprisoned in Mountjoy, Wheatfield or Portlaoise but in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. His jailers are departmental officials. The prisoner in question is the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, who has enthusiastically given up the freedom to act responsibly and has failed to stamp his authority on his Department. He has allowed his officials to totally dictate the way in which the Department is run. The consequences of this dereliction of duty have been described as "a shambles" by a member of the Government. The "zero-tolerance Minister" has become a Minister of zero ambition, zero innovation, zero imagination and zero ability. The sorrowful state of his tenure in office reached its lowest depths when he officially opened Clover Hill Prison and the women's prison in Mountjoy when neither was in a position to take in inmates. If the situation were not so serious, it would be farcical.
The Minister has discovered that in Government, photo opportunities and soundbites are simply not sufficient. Nowhere has this been better exemplified than by the Government's treatment of asylum seekers who, in spite of what the Minister says, are treated like second class citizens and, in some cases, like animals herded on the street. Only seven of the 5,500 applicants for asylum this year have had their applications granted. A total of 1,000 people are seeking asylum each month. The Eastern Health Board is in chaos and simply cannot cope. It appears the Government's policy is to make this country as uncomfortable and unwelcoming as possible for immigrants in the vain hope that they will simply disappear. In addition, we had the cynical intervention of Deputy Callely, which apparently was tacitly supported by the Taoiseach. This is cheap politics. There are always votes to be gained by heightening racial tension. I do not believe Deputy Callely is a rabid racist, rather he is an opportunistic dimwit with an eye for a few extra votes.
In spite of our history and that as far back as 1985 the Taoiseach called for an amnesty for 70,000 illegal Irish immigrants in the US, the Government's immigration policy simply sees immigration as a problem to be combated. We see this in the Eurodac proposal, approved in this House in October, which provides for the fingerprinting of immigrants, and in the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Bill currently before us. We see it in the obstacles placed in the path of those immigrants who wish to work. Only 30 of the 2,500 immigrants eligible to work have been issued with permits. We see it in the proposals to give immigrants vouchers instead of cash. This proposal represents a significant departure from the principle of equal treatment under social welfare regulations. Dr. Colin Harvey from Amnesty said that, in practice, vouchers stigmatise asylum seekers and do not permit engagement in activities central to community life.
The Minister and, indeed, the Government should walk down any street in this city where they will see advertisements on windows looking for labour. There is a severe labour shortage in this town and country. According to economists, we require an additional 160,000 workers to deliver implementation of the national development plan. According to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, work visa plans for non-nationals entering the workforce could be a key factor in solving labour needs and they say 50,000 jobs in the national economy are unfilled. That is what we are looking at. The Tánaiste realises this but is doing nothing about it. Instead she is putting obstacles in people's way.
On the Minister's handling of the prison system, a number of points have been made by my colleagues from Fine Gael and the Labour Party. There is a number of issues which the Minister needs to address. Zero tolerance has been proved to be a futile policy.
Deputy Gormley, your five minutes have concluded.
What the Minister is doing is mopping the floor while refusing to turn off the tap. His Department is in chaos and I hope that on foot this motion, he will address the issues raised.
I move amendment No. 1:
Delete all words after "Dáil Éireann", and substitute:
–commends and supports the commitment of the Government, as laid out in the policy agreement "An Action Programme for the Millennium", to improve and enhance the effectiveness of the criminal justice system;
–mindful of the backlog of applications inherited by this Government, and the significant strain placed on the asylum process and services by the escalating number of applicants; acknowledging the need for a fair and streamlined process that will eliminate lengthy delays; and acknowl edging the urgent need to promote tolerance and respect for diversity in our society; and recognising the need for a comprehensive and multifaceted strategy to deal with all of these issues, reaffirms its fullest confidence in the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and notes the positive measures taken by the Minister to put resources in place to ensure that all asylum applications are dealt with in an efficient and effective manner;
–notes that this has included the provision of 144 additional staff, the establishment of the Refugee Applications Centre and the development of fair and effective procedures and notes also the Minister's plan to provide the further resources now required;
–notes that the Minister has established the Refugee Legal Service to ensure that independent legal advice is available to asylum seekers at all stages of the asylum process and an independent monitoring committee to ensure that a quality legal service is provided to asylum seekers;
–notes that the Minister brought forward amendments to the Refugee Act, 1996, to make that Act workable, thus providing for a refugee applications commissioner with power to delegate and the establishment of a refugee advisory board and is currently working on regulations to ensure that the Refugee Act, 1996, as amended by the Immigration Act, 1999, is implemented as soon as possible;
–notes that the Minister is committed to ensuring that those who are found to be genuine refugees are fully integrated and enjoy all the rights that go with that status and that immigrants generally, irrespective of their status, also have their human rights fully respected;
–notes the measures taken by the Minister and the Government in response to the current high level of asylum applications, including the establishment of a directorate to co-ordinate the dispersal of asylum seekers throughout the country to ensure that all asylum seekers are provided with accommodation;
–notes that the Minister's Department, in conjunction with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment as appropriate, operates a system under which persons can immigrate legally to Ireland for employment and other purposes;
–notes that the Minister has stated on a number of occasions his commitment to review immigration policy, in particular, to facilitate the entry of persons for the purpose of employment and that this matter is the subject of consideration by his Department and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment;
–notes the Minister's plans to bring forward a comprehensive modern code of immigration and residence law which will provide a solid framework for the development and implementation of fair and sensible immigration policies to meet the changing needs of Irish society, while at the same time respecting the rights of non-nationals in their dealings with the law;
–commends and supports the Minister's ongoing regeneration of the prison system and the establishment of an independent prison's authority, which will contribute to a modernised penal system playing a pivotal role in protecting the community and reducing offending;
–notes the progress made by him in finalising the construction of an unprecedented 1,000 new additional prison spaces as set out in the programme for Government to tackle overcrowding and other deficiencies in the prison system;
–notes the Minister's efforts to reduce the incidence of suicide in Irish prisons while not compromising the human rights of all prisoners to a reasonable degree of privacy;
–notes the Minister's success in establishing on a statutory basis an independent and integrated Courts Service;
–notes the continuing unparalleled and unprecedented reduction of up to 20 per cent in all serious crime, including armed robberies and public order type offences since the Government came to office;
–supports the Minister's commitment to maintaining the momentum of the fight against organised crime by providing the Garda Síochána with the legislative backing and the necessary resources required to deal with the issue;
–notes the Minister's efforts to bring about an acceptable resolution to all sides in the pay and productivity discussions with the Garda Síochána;
–commends the Minister's proactive policies for dealing with both the supply and demand reduction sides of the drugs problem;
–notes the achievement of the Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform in securing funding from the national development plan to develop crime prevention measures to reduce youth crime;
–recognises the Minister's establishment of the National Crime Forum in 1998 and the
National Crime Council recently as landmarks in the criminal justice sector;
–acknowledges the Minister's commitment to reducing sexual offences by commissioning a significant piece of research into the reason there are such high attrition rates in bringing prosecutions in rape cases and by bringing forward legislation to provide for the establishment of a register of sex offenders and also for the separate legal representation of victims in rape cases;
–recognises the Minister's determination to assist the Legal Aid Board in addressing the issue of waiting lists by substantially increasing the staff of the board in the period 1996 to 1999, and by increasing grant-in-aid by 84 per cent from £6.5 million to £11.953 million in the same period;
–notes the comprehensive and unprecedented programme of legislation he continues to bring forward and his intention to bring forward new legislation to regulate the private security industry as soon as other priorities allow;
–notes that the Minister has no function whatsoever in relation to the development of policy or the provision of resources to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions or the office of the Chief State Solicitor, but is nevertheless concerned to ensure that appropriate procedures, properly resourced, are put in place to avoid a reoccurrence of the errors in the trial referred to, and
–notes that since he took up office, the criminal justice system has never been better resourced and equipped to tackle the incidence of crime in society.
I look forward to having a debate on the issues referred to in the motion. I welcome this opportunity to put on the record an account of my stewardship of matters for which I have responsibility since I was appointed Minister in June 1997 at the formation of this Government. It is only right and proper that this House gets an opportunity to ventilate its views on these matters and it is my earnest wish that it do so in a calm, reasonable and constructive fashion.
I make this appeal not because I, no more than any other Member of this Government, expect anything less than a vigorous exchange of views with the Deputies opposite, but because we should avoid at all costs saying anything here that might give excuses to that small minority in the community to indulge in reprehensible and criminal behaviour towards non-nationals in our population be they refugees, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants or legal immigrants. Asylum seekers are people whose rights and dignity must be respected and we must not allow the issues arising in this regard to descend to political game playing or opportunism.
At the end of this debate, I am confident this House will renew its mandate to me to continue with my work in bringing forward and implementing the policy and measures set out in the Government's programme in the justice, equality and law reform areas.
Much has been achieved in the two and a half or so years since I took up office and I know that even my sternest and partisan critics will acknowledge that considerable success has been achieved in many areas. I refer, for example, to the unprecedented turn around in the fight against crime where we are on course by the end of this year for a 25 per cent reduction in crime in real terms in the years since I came into office. Equally, over the same period, I have, at the behest of the Government, brought forward legislation covering my areas of responsibilities on a scale that was hitherto unknown. The strength of the Garda Síochána is at an all time high and will go higher in the coming period as we reach our target strength of 12,000. In fact, the Garda has never been better equipped or resourced as the force goes about its job of tackling crime.
I will return to these matters and the other issues referred to for which I have ministerial responsibility at a later stage of my contribution. Turning first to the matter of immigration and asylum, it is important in the interest of a well informed debate, to outline the general guiding considerations which underpin the Government's policies and strategies on asylum and general immigration related matters. I will underline the following elements of policy in particular. Asylum and immigration law generally must he brought up to date with contemporary values and realities, and must be applied fairly, justly and humanely in the same way as all other laws are applied. We must have systems in place to ensure that all applications for asylum are dealt with in an efficient and effective manner, that the necessary resources are made available for this and those whose job it is to work within the immigration-asylum service are also treated fairly and justly. We must not allow legal distinctions between the various categories of immigrants to be blurred and more specifically, we must not allow the definition of "refugee", which is defined and enshrined in the 1951 Geneva Convention to be devalued. Those who are found to be genuine refugees must be fully integrated and enjoy all the rights that go with that status, and immigrants generally, irrespective of their status or whether they happen to be here illegally, must also have their human rights fully respected and, in particular, we must ensure that our immigrants are not allowed to become the subject of criminal or racist attacks. We must not allow internationally organised criminal groups to perpetrate large scale fraud by means of illegal traffic and exploitation of human beings, and we must deal firmly but fairly with those who are found to have entered the jurisdiction illegally.
Before I discuss these general guiding considerations in more detail, there are two fundamental points that need to be made. The first is that there is what can only be described as a fog of confusion surrounding the various terms which are used in any discussions about immigration, asylum and related issues. At the heart of this confusion is the failure to distinguish between a refugee, an asylum seeker and an illegal immigrant. They are not interchangeable terms. I will dwell further on this significant point at a later stage of my contribution.
The second matter which gives rise to confused debate is the idea that immigration laws should be such that economic disadvantage, of itself, would provide an automatic and unfettered right of passage across national boundaries. If it were thus, not only would our immigration code be something of a worldwide exception and absurd in its features, but if implemented would mean that, within a very short time, we would experience a level of uncontrolled inflow with which we simply could not cope. That would most certainly neither serve the interests of economically disadvantaged immigrants or the people of the State – it would amount to a form of irresponsibility which could not be justified on moral or on any other ground.
In other words it is essential that there should be sensible balanced and defensible laws to control immigration and it is equally essential – if the law is not to be a nonsense – that the arrangements in place should be such that those who bypass the controls and enter illegally can, following the application of fair procedures, be obliged to leave. There is absolutely no point in having formal and lawful immigration laws and channels in place, which are broadly in line with those in other jurisdictions, if those who bypass the lawful channels are rewarded for doing so.
Basic immigration law is laid down in the unfortunately entitled Aliens Act of 1935. Immigration law is not something which must remain settled and immutable for all time. Deputies will know I am in the process of fundamentally reviewing this very complex area of law, so as to produce an immigration code that is appropriate to the world in which we now live.
In the area of asylum, which is a subset of general immigration law, there have already been significant and worthwhile amendments to the law, the leading example being the Refugee Act, 1996. While the latter Act has its flaws – mainly because the structures created were not adequate to deal with the very substantial increase in asylum applications which subsequently emerged – by and large, it is a fair and reasonable measure and that is why current practice in the area of asylum applications is substantially guided by it. As Deputies will recall, the House also amended this legislation last summer so as to further strengthen its provisions and to make it operable in the radically changed circumstances which have evolved since it was enacted in 1996. I expect to be able to bring the amended Act into force early in the new year.
One example of current practice which owes its origin to the Act is the system of appeals which exists in the case of refugee applicants who wish to challenge the decisions made on their applications. I mention this matter because in the course of my statement, I want to address matters which are the subject of ongoing confusion and misrepresentation, and this is one of them. All applications for refugee status are decided strictly in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the UNHCR. UNHCR personnel have access to all papers. There is, therefore, no question of arbitrary decision-making and anybody who suggests otherwise is quite simply wrong. The most important point and the one I want to stress is that appeals are decided independently of my Department by people who have been appointed specifically for that purpose. My reason for stressing this is that I have heard it repeated over and over again that there is no independent appeals mechanism. That suggestion is simply without foundation. When I became Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform I found the immigration and asylum service was totally under resourced, given the problems facing it. In reality, the situation facing me was one of utter chaos, as 22 staff were working on thousands of applications which had built up over previous years. They were doing their level best but in truth they could not cope, nor could they be expected to cope with the administrative burden placed on them.
While the Government sponsored the Refugee Act in the Summer of 1996 – and I have acknowledged that this legislation had its merits – there was no follow-through from theoretical provision to actual delivery. No sooner was the ink on the new Act dry than the Government realised that its provisions for dealing with applications were hopelessly and woefully inadequate. Over the latter part of 1996 and into 1997, the level of applications continued to rise at an ever increasing rate. What was that Government's response? In a word, nothing. The Act lay on the shelf unimplemented and while the Government refused to acknowledge it publicly, it privately admitted that it was also unimplementable in the form in which it had been enacted. Meanwhile, the number of applications continued to grow and soon reached nearly 4,000. Interviews of applicants, as one would expect given the meagre staff resources dedicated to the task, were practically non-existent. In reality, applicants had no idea if, let alone when, they might get an interview. As for legal aid, research facilities, health care, independent appeals mechanisms and so forth, they were simply not put in place. I want to avoid turning this issue into a political football, but facts are facts, the truth is the truth and they need to be stated.
This is sad.
That Government simply refused to acknowledge that it had a major issue on its hands that required urgent attention. Literally on its way out the door on 25 June 1997, it eventually decided that it could safely take action and the Government agreed to impose immigration controls on visa nationals entering the State from the UK. This feeble response by that Government, coming as it did so late in the day, was the Rainbow Coalition's response to the unprecedented influx of asylum seekers to the country.
In contrast, the Government of which I am a member immediately decided on taking office that this issue needed urgent attention. We immediately set about taking that action. We provided the staffing – more than 150, so that to date, nearly 6,500 interviews could be scheduled. We established the one stop shop concept in Mount Street with all the facilities and services required by asylum seekers located at one centrally located premises. We put independent appeals mechanisms in place. We provided legal aid, health care facilities and a documentation centre. In short, we provided a system of processing asylum applications with adequate resources which had at least a realistic prospect of meeting the demands we faced.
I do not propose now to sit around bemoaning the fact that the inflow continues and pointing to the fact that, in terms of staff and resources, the situation has been totally transformed. I acknowledge that we need to do much more and that we need more staff and more resources. Not only do I acknowledge this, I am doing something about it.
This is nonsense.
Also, any person who claims that the current rate of increase in applications was entirely predictable and that we should have planned for it displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the issues involved. The reality is that my Department has no way of knowing whether ten, 100 or 500 applicants will show up on any given day. That is completely outside our control but irrespective of the numbers involved, all have to be dealt with. This issue is being dealt with on a crossdepartmental basis, which is a matter of some confusion. The other Departments and agencies involved are and have been examining the adequacy of their existing resource commitments and will be putting in place the necessary measures to meet any shortfalls in areas for which they have prime responsibility. In particular, additional staff, accommodation and extended outreach clinics are being put in place by the Eastern Health Board to address the difficulties experienced by that agency and six clinics are already in operation. The health board aim is to more than double this number. Given that the principal cause of the difficulties in Mount Street in recent weeks was the volume of repeat callers seeking the services of the health board, these new facilities will greatly ease those pressures on the system. I am determined to provide the necessary resources and I have the full support of the Government in this. None of us as responsible Ministers and Parliamentarians can take any satisfaction or pride in the fact that people have had to queue for long hours for services.
I am sure Members will readily condemn the tendency to lay the blame for the difficulties experienced in meeting the needs of asylum seekers at the door of those who are on the front line endeavouring to provide a service under what are often extremely trying circumstances. The officials of my Department dealing and the staff of the Legal Aid Board dealing with applications remained at their desks and did their work. That situation has also been the subject of misleading commentary. The staff of the Eastern Health Board who are housed at the same one stop shop in Mount Street were quite simply overwhelmed and in fact became quite apprehensive because they simply could not meet the demands made on them by a large number of applicants, many of whom were tense and distressed. The officials concerned sought the necessary assistance and resources from their own agencies and, I am glad to say, quickly obtained that assistance.
To give an indication of the volume of throughput in the Mount Street centre, the total number of persons dealt with in my Department's reception area in the Refugee Applications Centre during the seven week period from the week ending 1 October 1999 to 12 November 1999 was 4,579, which includes 1,676 new applicants and the balance, 2,903 having general queries. In addition, more than 426 persons attended the Centre for Appeal Hearings and Interviews.
Many of the sinister suggestions about the motivation of officials have been directed at my Department. I emphasise that the issue of immigration and asylum is being dealt with on an interdepartmental basis, that interdepartmental structures have been in place for some time and that we have been building on and strengthening those structures with the central objective of providing a coherent Government response to these issues. The staff in the Mount Street office come from various Departments and Deputies will recall that many of those dealing directly with applicants were retired public servants, recruited on a contract basis specially for that purpose. Moreover, the Taoiseach has, as has been reported, called a special meeting of all Ministers who have a role in relation to asylum seekers. This meeting is scheduled to take place on Monday 29 November and will focus on identifying any measures needed to further improve co-ordination in this area.
The Interdepartmental Committee on Immigration, Asylum and Related Issues, has done excellent work in moving forward with its remit on a cross departmental basis. Moreover, the Government at its meeting of 9 November decided to further augment the work of this com mittee and the system's capacity to deal with asylum seekers by establishing a central directorate headed up at assistant secretary level with staff drawn from the other relevant and appropriate agencies and Departments. That directorate is already in place and is headed by an assistant secretary of my Department with staff from the Eastern Health Board, Dublin Corporation and the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs seconded to it. Its most immediate and urgent task is to ensure that the housing needs of asylum seekers are met and, in accordance with the decision of the Government, this will be achieved by dispersal of applicants on a nation-wide basis. There is no other option: quite simply, the supply of accommodation for asylum seekers in the Dublin area has been exhausted.
On interdepartmental structures, the Secretaries General of a number of Departments, at my suggestion, have also been drawn into the task on hand to further underline the importance of dealing with this very complex issue on a cross departmental basis.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has stated, in relation to the tendency to undermine the concept of "refugee", that bogus applications for asylum clog up determination procedures, delay the identification of genuine applicants and in consequence should be discouraged to the greatest possible extent. I mention this, and have done so on many occasions before, because in a great many public discussions on the subject of refugees there is a persistent and discernible tendency to describe everybody who applies for refugee status as a "refugee", despite the fact that a significant majority do not quality for refugee status and are actually economic migrants. To avoid any doubt, the fact that the law makes a legal distinction does not mean that we are at liberty, in dealing with one category of immigrant, i.e. a refugee, to apply the highest international standards but, in dealing with a different category of immigrant, i.e. an economic migrant, to apply an inferior standard. The point in maintaining the legal distinction is to produce clarity, to ensure that there is reasoned debate and, to ensure that there is justice.
Its purpose is not to produce discrimination against any category of immigrant and let us be clear about that. I have consistently made the point and I repeat it now that my policy and that of the Government is that all classes of immigrants whether illegal or otherwise will be treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with principles which respects their human dignity. If Deputy Howlin understood the distinction between an illegal immigrant on one hand and a refugee on the other, he would recognise that his quotation from me is entirely consistent with what I have been saying in Government. I meant what I said then and would say the same this evening.
By the Minister's actions shall he be judged.
It must be a basic concern of any Minister whose job it is to deal with the problem of public order to ensure that the evils of racism and the violence which have been associated with racism throughout the world are not allowed to take root. That there have been racist attacks here already is something which every Member and all right-thinking people must condemn without equivocation. We most certainly do not assist the process of integration or help to avoid the evils of racism by blurring the legal distinctions to which I have already referred. The general public is not impressed, and many are angered, when they hear comments, the general import of which is that a blurred application of the law is to be supported or at least tolerated when one is dealing with the problem of illegal immigration, but not when one is dealing with breaches of other laws. Suggestions to the effect that immigrants deserve preferential treatment when it comes to enforcement of the law, feeds into the hands of those whose basic tendencies are racist.
On the question of immigrant rights, one suggestion has been made, with sincere and well meaning intent, that all those who have entered the jurisdiction, even if they have done so illegally, should have an automatic right to work pending the determination of their applications. The Government has responded to this suggestion in a measured and balanced way by applying the right to work to the people who entered the jurisdiction prior to 26 July 1999 but who still had not got to the stage of initial processing of their applications.
About 15 of them.
They did not apply.
They were not allowed.
Allowing a general right to work, however, in the case of persons who enter the jurisdiction illegally and without any basis which would warrant their being treated as refugees is a different matter and would, in practice, require that immigration controls be set aside. The rainbow Government acknowledged this when it included a provision in the Refugee Act, 1996, which specifically precluded asylum seekers from working while their applications were being processed.
It is not the way to meet labour shortages. Apart from the fact that nobody has any idea, in the case of persons entering the jurisdiction illegally, whether they have the skills and capacities to meet these shortages, there is no doubt that if illegal immigrants secure an automatic right to work by claiming refugee status the incidence of bogus claims will increase. It is no answer to say that the right to work can be withdrawn if the claim to be a refugee is subsequently found to be without substance. It is infinitely more difficult to deal with the consequences of illegal entry to the State at that stage. Unless we are prepared to deal with those consequences, in other words if we are not prepared to ask illegal immigrants to leave, we cannot expect that the requirements of immigration law will be respected in the first place.
If, as appears to be the case, we need to supplement our pool of labour in this jurisdiction, I am strongly in favour of our doing so by means of properly controlled immigration quotas, in so far as this is permissible under EU law. I and the Department have made our position clear on this. For the avoidance of doubt in the matter, I am on record as saying that I see considerable merit in attempting to fill that immigration quota from poorer countries to the extent that this is permissible under European law. The important point is that we do this in a lawful and properly controlled way and not in a way that would, in practice, not only result in a chaotic policy framework but would definitely encourage trafficking and exploitation of human beings.
Moreover, the Tánaiste and I have been working in close co-operation in finalising proposals to streamline the existing work permits system. Our objective is to ensure that both the work permits system and the immigration system are streamlined so that labour shortages in the economy can be addressed through legal immigration to the State.
In this connection, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that many thousands of non-nationals arrive here lawfully every year to take up employment opportunities. Over the past few years, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment issued over 14,000 work permits to employers to facilitate the filling of vacancies by non-nationals from all parts of the world. My Department, as a matter of routine, issues visas to immigrants who wish to come here in these circumstances. Moreover, there are close to 20,000 non-EU nationals lawfully living, working, training or being educated here at any given time. Over 85 per cent of all visa applications made to my Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs are issued as a matter of course and without further ado.
There is, in other words, no difficulty in principle about the idea that we should admit non-nationals to take up work opportunities or to study in this country, provided they do so through lawful channels. I make these points because some of the more ill informed comments by persons outside the House would leave one with the impression that it is more difficult to lawfully enter Ireland than it is to get through the eye of the proverbial needle.
It is now recognised that the trafficking in human beings by internationally organised criminal entities is on a par, in terms of its profitability, with the international drugs trade. The unfortunate victims, often although not always from Third World countries, are lured into parting with whatever resources they may have in return for an illegally organised passage to the jurisdiction of choice. The nature of criminal activity is that if this problem is not addressed, it will certainly continue.
There are no easy answers. It is a fact of life, for example, that a sizeable number of illegal immigrants are trafficked across the border with Northern Ireland and from the UK generally. It is extremely difficult to deal with this because of the existence of the common travel area. Nevertheless, some preventative measures are clearly necessary if we are not to become the subject of largescale fraud at the hands of traffickers. This is where the trafficking Bill, now before the House, comes into the picture. I look forward to debating it on Second Stage shortly.
I have taken some time to explain the context in which the Government's policies are being implemented and to deal with some of the fundamental elements of asylum policy. There is, of course, the view that we should set standards which are different from and superior to the international norm. In other words, we should "go it alone" in dealing with the complex issue of large migration flows.
Attractive as this proposition might appear to be, it fails to take account of essential realities. One hard reality is that if we were to apply an immigration policy which is significantly more flexible and liberal in its features than those applying in the rest of the European Union, there is little doubt that over a relatively short period we would be left to deal with an immigration inflow with which we simply could not cope. It serves nobody's interests, apart perhaps from those of criminal organisations, to allow a situation to develop where there are no effective immigration controls in place which are broadly in line with those of our European partners. It is an extremely important and complex issue. It must be addressed in a well informed, comprehensive and humanitarian way. We must put resources into our asylum and immigration system and we must support those whose job it is to make the system work fairly and effectively.
It is not a situation which is capable of simplistic solutions. There are times when difficult decisions are and will be called for. I am prepared to listen to and support sensible and realistic options and I will continue, with the full support of the Government, to do all I can to implement the law in a fair, reasonable and humanitarian way.
Before I deal in detail with the ongoing prison building programme, it is only right that I put the matter into context. On taking office as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in July 1997, I inherited a prison system that was in dire need of major investment. Planned prison build ing projects at Castlerea and the Women's Prison in Mountjoy had been cancelled in mid-term by the outgoing Government. On top of this, nothing had been done about refurbishment of Mountjoy Prison, by then in a deplorable state, as the main prison in the State.
That is not true.
Since coming into office, I have opened Cloverhill Prison, Mountjoy Women's Prison and Castlerea Prison and secured Government approval for construction of the new Midlands Prison for 400 offenders and later extended by the addition of an extra wing for 115 places.
The Minister might be concerned about what is happening in them; it is a disgrace.
I now have the planning process under way for the complete refurbishment of Mountjoy Prison and major refurbishment at St. Patrick's institution and Shelton Abbey. The replacement of the C block in Limerick and planning of a new wing in Portlaoise Prison are at an advanced stage.
Along with the prisons building programme, I have taken important decisions to revitalise the prison system. I have already established the Prisons Authority on a transitional basis, pending the legislation to give it statutory effect, and the interim board and director general are already in place. I have also instigated important reviews of the Probation and Welfare Service and the psychology service and a wide-ranging independent review of the prison medical service has just commenced.
It would not be right or fair to simply blame my predecessor, Deputy Owen, for the lamentable prisons situation I inherited. The former Minister was tied hand and foot by her colleagues and was prevented from moving forward in a substantial way with prison building and other reforms—
Oh dear, dear.
—not least by the then Minister for Finance and current leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Quinn. They were not prepared to put a penny into the prisons area. Indeed, some members of that Government apparently considered it a mark of pride that they were making no investment in this area.
I have been criticised for opening prisons which were not in a position to take in prisoners immediately. However, some Deputies might wish to reflect that I am the only Minister who opened two prisons, indeed three prisons.
(Interruptions).
I now turn to the delays experienced in commissioning the new prisons at Cloverhill and Mountjoy. Over the last few weeks, I have been in constant touch with the director general of the Prison Service on the progress being made to resolve the difficulties which had arisen during the commissioning period. With the exception of the ongoing remedial work on the floor in certain areas of Cloverhill Prison, the prison is now ready to receive prisoners. Cloverhill became operational last Wednesday when a small number of prisoners were transferred there. Prisoners will continue to be phased in over the next few weeks as is normal.
People such as Deputy Higgins who opposed this policy had better be mindful of the fact that prisoners have for too long been kept in dire prison conditions—
I was on the McBride commission on prisons to which the Minister's predecessor would not listen. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
(Interruptions).
The Minister without interruption.
The new Women's Prison at Mountjoy has been built to accommodate 80 prisoners. Again, when the building was handed over to the Office of Public Works by the contractor, John Paul Construction, there was a list of outstanding snag works to be attended to by the contractor and the prison had to be fitted with locks by the governor of works of the Prison Service. Some difficulties arose in relation to the fire safety system which has been designed to the highest possible specification. I have been informed that these difficulties have now been resolved. It is expected that all outstanding snag works will be finalised by Wednesday of this week.
Tonight, we have heard repeated, in mantra like fashion, what the Opposition is against. No doubt, we will be treated to further episodes of this litany over the course of the debate. The people know where I stand, whether it is in relation to tackling crime, ending the scandal of the revolving door in our prisons, giving the protection of the State to those found to need it or dealing humanely but effectively with those who abuse our immigration laws. Perhaps it is time the Opposition parties treated the people to something a little more constructive than mere negativity. Is it too much to ask that they will take the opportunity of this debate to outline where they stand on illegal immigrants?
(Mayo): The Minister of State does not know where the Minister stands.
Are they prepared to let any person who is trafficked into the State have an automatic right to remain as long as he or she wishes, even if they have no grounds for doing so? If that is their policy, they are abandoning immigration control and no amount of rhetoric can disguise that reality.
Alternatively, if they believe that the sensible, prudent and responsible course of action is to maintain immigration controls, what measures do they propose to give effect to that policy? Do they propose to abandon the Refugee Act, 1996, which enabled the ratification of the Dublin Convention under which applications for refugee status are to be examined in the first state of entry to the EU and under which we have received more applicants from EU countries than were returned. What exactly do the parties opposite stand for? It is time they had the courage of their convictions and spelt out clearly and unequivocally what they would do in Government.
(Mayo): We would put in place a fair, open and compassionate system.
Let the Minister speak.
His time is up.
We know what they are against, but we do not know what they are for. When in office they did not know what to do, so they did nothing.
Equally, on crime and imprisonment, it seems the merit of any policy is not what counts; all that counts is whether there is an opportunity, however weak or far-fetched, of sniping at Government achievements. For example, they bemoan the existence of the revolving door—
(Mayo): It has been replaced by no door.
A new door.
—yet Fine Gael's contribution in Government to tackling the problem was to pull the rug out from under its Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform when she, in fairness, tried to do something about it. Not having learnt from that fiasco, it described my unprecedented prison building and modernisation programme as a "binge" while, at the same time, it rightly criticises the conditions in Mountjoy. Has it not occurred to the parties opposite that the overcrowding in Mountjoy and elsewhere can only be rectified by the building of new prisons?
The Minister should conclude.
There are Deputies opposite who have described this Government's anti-crime policies as a "failure". If failure is to be judged by a reduction in crime of between 20 per cent and 25 per cent since the Government came into office, I can live with that.
(Mayo): What about zero tolerance?
It does, however, demonstrate, to be charitable about it, a view of reality among Members opposite which, to put it very mildly, requires explanation. Is it any wonder the people told them in no uncertain terms what they thought about this Alice in Wonderland make-believe world where their inertia was only surpassed by their incompetence.
The Minister must conclude.
He is well over his time.
Far be it for me to advise the justice spokespersons on how to do their jobs effectively, but they might consider developing the occasional policy of their own, whether on immigration, prisons or crime, as an alternative to opposing the Government's sensible policies simply for the sake of opposing them.
As a Deputy who, in Opposition, offered constructive criticism and legislated from the opposite benches to an extent hitherto unknown in this House, I am and have been conscious of the need to take on board reasonable and sensible suggestions from the Deputies opposite. I acknowledge there have been some positive contributions from several Deputies on the other side of this House, but sadly that does not apply to the Opposition's spokespersons on justice.
The Minister must conclude as I must call the next speaker.
In Government they did nothing and now they are saying "do something", but I will not roll over and acquiesce when, on this occasion, it is as clear as daylight that we are not dealing with substantive arguments by Deputies opposite but with unmistakable evidence of political bankruptcy.
The Minister is very raw.
It is a sad day for democracy.
I wish to share my time with Deputies Burke, Belton, Crawford and Ó Caoláin.
That is agreed.
The most telling of the many indictments against the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, is the prisons without prisoners. We all know of the Irish folklore ballad, "The pub with no beer", but new prisons with no prisoners is surely lamentable. The fact that prison officers are paid full wages for securing the prisons with no prisoners is surely ludicrous, but a suggestion that prison officers are being paid overtime to secure the prisons with no prisoners is surely a joke. In most countries a Minister presiding over such a prison regime would resign before being pushed, but there has been no such action on the part of the Minister for zero tolerance, Deputy O'Donoghue.
I am in favour of decentralisation, but the August holiday stroke on the part of the Minister in removing the headquarters of the Legal Aid Board to Cahirciveen is another joke when set against the background of lengthening queues for civil legal aid. This move will add substantially to costs and can in no way contribute to increase the efficiency of that body or the citizens it serves.
Far beyond a joke, however, is the Minister's feeble response to the victims of sexual abuse. I wish to address specifically the Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Bill currently before this House. Under the Minister's proposals, assuming the Bill is enacted by 31 January next year, any statement of complaint made by a sexually abused person to the Garda or to anyone before 31 January 1997 will render that complainant or victim ineligible to take a case for civil damages. Many of the victims of the State's most notorious abusers will be deprived of a remedy under the Minister's plan. In effect, it means that those who suffered at the hands of a deliberate criminal act, where persons were found guilty by the courts, will have absolutely no civil remedy under our law. This runs contrary to statements made by the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, and the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Martin, to victims of abuse.
It seems the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, is deliberately ignoring the pleas of his Government colleagues, both of whom appear to wish to allow victims of sexual abuse a civil remedy. The Government's apology to victims of sexual abuse appears to ring very hollow when set in the context of the facts. Of the roughly 1,400 abused while in our education system over the years, 30 per cent will be automatically statutorily barred under the Minister's new Bill and the remaining 70 per cent will be faced with a pre-trial trial on the matter of the statute and on the question of knowledge and capability, which will result in the majority of such cases not being proceeded with.
In cases where the State is known to have covered up in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, the victims and those who suffered in an appalling manner will be left without a remedy in spite of the comments of the Taoiseach. It is difficult to have confidence in a Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who on the one hand sympathises with victims of sexual abuse and on the other ensures, by his proposals, that few of those victims will have an opportunity of redress. Under the Minister's proposal, offenders can make statements and be charged, convicted and jailed in the knowledge that they cannot be touched by the victims or that they will not be forced even to apologise, much less be answerable in the form of compensation. Victims who were gravely wronged and who continue to suffer lifelong behavioural and emotional trauma directly attributable to physical and sexual abuse will be denied a remedy in the courts by the Minister.
This is the same Minister who presides over a prison system where sex offenders receive minimalist, if any, counselling or rehabilitation. It is totally unacceptable that there is no obligation on those convicted of violent sexual offences in our prison system to undergo any programme of treatment while in prison. The reality is that some prisoners are being released into the community without having availed of any treatment whatever. This is a sad indictment of the stewardship of the Minister who has clearly lost the confidence of the Progressive Democrats arm of Government and in whom this House cannot have confidence.
I welcome the opportunity to support the Labour motion of no confidence in the Minister and the Government in terms of their abject failure to bring in legislation or measures that would streamline the processing of applications from asylum seekers and refugees who have come here. For how long more must we witness the scenes of long queues outside the applications office and the resulting chaos? In no circumstances can it be perceived that the Government has not had time to regulate the position and introduce the necessary regulations. There is an obvious lack of commitment and ability on its part to resolve the problem.
When I read the phrases "supports the commitment of this Government . and enhance the effectiveness of the justice system;" and "acknowledging the urgent need to promote tolerance and respect for the diversity in our society" in the Government's amendment, I realise how out of touch the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, is with reality and the shambles the Government has made of the refugee issue and many other justice issues. Can we believe the Minister when he said tonight that "asylum seekers are people whose rights and dignity we must respect"? I have doubts about his commitment to that statement.
Can we find out from him whether the Government intends to introduce legislation to resolve the shambles of the Government policy on this matter? We have a spectacle on the one hand of the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, con firming on 15 November that the Progressive Democrats would be launching its policy document on refugees within a fortnight and at the same time the Tánaiste, Deputy Harney, and the Minister, Deputy O'Donoghue, have said legislation on the State's first work visa for people from non-EU states will be drawn up within a fortnight. From this, we recognise the continuation of the chaos presided over by the Government. Last week's Cabinet summit to streamline the policy on asylum seekers excludes any input from the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell. Where is the Government going on this issue other than into deeper disarray?
For centuries we, as a nation, prided ourselves on the contributions our emigrants made to many other economies. When Irish dignitaries visited the UK, the USA and Australia they were told of the magnificent part played by Irish emigrants and refugees in the development of their economies.
Debate adjourned.