Before resuming my contribution on this Bill, I had the advantage of hearing the opinions of various organisations on the effects of the Bill. We have also had several opportunities to hear the philosophy that underlines the legislative programme of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
The Human Rights Commission has made a strong submission to the Oireachtas Joint Com mittee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights which deals with aspects of the Immigration Bill. It states, along with the UNHCR and others who are working with asylum seekers, that there are a number of areas in which the Bill may breach important international protocols. The submission mentions the fact that Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides everyone with the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution, might be breached. It states that Article 31 of the convention relating to the status of refugees, which provides for contracting states not to impose penalties on refugees, may be breached. Most important, according to the submission, Article 33 of that convention, the important guarantee of non- refoulement whereby each state is obliged not to send back any person in any manner whatsoever to a country in which he fears persecution if he returns, may be breached. On all those grounds, this is a defective Bill and the Minister is obliged to return to this House with a Bill that properly reflects our commitments in international agreements.
The Minister should state in his reply to Second Stage whether he agrees with these criticisms and, more important, whether he agrees with the right of the Human Rights Commission to make such a submission criticising the failings they see in this Bill. Recently the very same Minister sought aggressively to attack another civil servant in the performance of his duty, namely the outgoing Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, who was performing exactly the same role in regard to concerns he had about the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill. A Minister who behaved in that manner then is likely to behave in the same manner now.
We have also heard, since I last had the opportunity of speaking in the House on this issue, an extraordinary speech by the Minister in which he spoke about the culture of human rights speak and attacked the notion of a rights-based society – a philosophy that will permeate all legislation the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform intends to introduce here. Most obviously, it can be applied to the long-awaited disability Bill and the rights of those with disabilities. This specific legislation can also be applied to asylum seekers and refugees. If rights are to be defined as the Minister recently defined them in his speech, then we are much poorer as a society. He is dividing up the notion of rights between civil and political rights and economic and social rights. He says that social and economic rights should not be defined or put in constitutional or legislative form; that if they come about they should do so by way of recognition of the workings of Parliament and that it is the benevolence of Parliament that will decide whether citizens have rights in social or economic areas.
The Minister might see himself as a type of latter day Edmund Burke but even he must recog nise that this is a Chamber that does not operate to the highest levels of parliamentary democracy. We do not have a parliamentary form of Government; we have an Executive that largely determines what is decided, when it is decided and what resources are provided for particular measures. A Minister who suggests that rights in relation to asylum seekers and refugees will somehow be defined for citizens and residents in our country is a Minister who is playing fast and loose with reality. This is a Government that will never grant such rights because it is philosophically disinclined to give rights to those it believes are not entitled to them. It is because the Government makes the definitions and decides how resources are divided that we need, in constitutional and legislative form, a defined series of rights for all members of our society.
The Minister will also need to respond to the point that Ireland is probably already in breach of Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in that people are being turned away from this country at the point of entry even if seeking the right of asylum. A recent newspaper article affirmed this fact and the Irish Refugee Council has also stated that there is growing evidence of asylum seekers being refused entry at Dublin and Cork Airports.
It is ironic that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is bringing in a Bill to introduce controls which, in practice, are already in operation by officials of the State. We also need to be concerned that in the long run, the trend of European Union anti-immigration laws seems to go even further. It has been proposed that legislation be introduced stating that where a person does not have a return flight, that person will be deemed to be a person who should no longer be in the country. This is being talked about and will possibly take the form of a directive to be adopted by all member states of the European Union. We then get into the very grey area of whether we are using such laws to affect genuine asylum seekers and refugees. Will they be applied as they were in the case of a noted Zimbabwean human rights lawyer travelling from a French airport to this country last week? If we are turning away people on the most tenuous of grounds even though they have a legitimate right to travel, we have already lost an important battle in regard to the standards of decency that should prevail in our society.
A further irony is that the Minister, as a result of discussions taking place at European Union level, is obliged to introduce the immigration and residents Bill in this House. If such a Bill is to come before us, why are we debating the Immigration Bill 2002? The Minister has, in his public pronouncements, given the impression that he is a "can do" Minister who is tackling problems but he can, in every aspect, be seen to be failing in terms of not living up to what he is saying in public and not providing any political back-up for what he is promoting in legislation.
I made the criticism in the past that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is responsible, with 37 proposed Bills, for most of the legislation on the Order Paper. Yet, we have no date in relation to the introduction of more than half of them. The propensity of another Minister to invent legislation was mentioned earlier on the Order of Business. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has an additional skill in that he goes so far as to give such legislation a title, yet none of us knows whether there is any intent behind it or whether we, as Members of the Dáil, will have an opportunity of examining such legislation.
I will return now to the Human Rights Commission's criticisms of this Bill. It is clear from the sizeable submission presented to the joint committee that a precedent exists in international case law that what the Minister is proposing in this legislation cannot, given existing standards, be applied at an international level. The Minister needs to take responsibility for legislation with which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees disagrees.
Now that the Minister has returned to the House, I will repeat the three criticisms made by the Human Rights Commission in regard to this legislation and perhaps he might respond to them later in the debate. The Commission said it is likely this Bill will breach three international conventions, Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Articles 31 and 33 of the convention relating to the status of refugees. I also asked earlier if the Minister agrees with the correctness of the Human Rights Commission making such a submission because he appeared to have difficulty with officers of the State taking on a similar role in regard to other legislation in the past. The Human Rights Commission has done a good job in putting forward a critique which needs a response. I have yet, as a Member of this House, to hear the Minister or other members of the Government commenting on whether there is validity in such criticisms and what changes, if any, we intend making to this particular legislation to make it better.
Based on the Human Rights Commission's criticisms, the fact that we are already breaching the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by turning away asylum seekers at airports, the criticism of the Irish Refugee Council and the fact that European Union legislation is heading in an even more draconian direction and is not supported by the majority of people in this country let alone in this House, the Minister needs to take this Bill away and reintroduce it rather than subject it to the wholesale number of amendments it will need on Committee Stage to make it a worthy Bill.