I have received a motion in the name of Deputy Gay Mitchell.
Irish Emigrants in the UK and the US: Motion.
I move:
That this committee hold hearings annually in Britain in particular, but also in the U.S., on the issues facing Irish emigrants with a view to advancing the proposals put forward by the task force on policy regarding emigrants.
In common with other members, including Members of the Oireachtas who are not members of this committee, I have a concern about the well-being of Irish emigrants abroad. This is a view which is broadly shared. Clearly the task force on emigrants would not have been set up if there was not an issue or a concern.
I was very touched and somewhat upset by a programme I saw recently on "Prime Time" which reminded me of our responsibility to our emigrants. I have on a number of occasions in the past, once in my capacity as Lord Mayor of Dublin and on other occasions as Minister of State and as a Member of the Oireachtas, visited emigrants abroad, in the UK, the US, Australia and New Zealand. I was very struck that most of our emigrants did a good job, got on in life, integrated and have been successful. However, a good number of them who have not done so have fallen on very bad times. Many of those who have fallen on bad times are people who went to Britain in more difficult economic times here and sent back remittances which kept families and communities going in the past.
The emigrant issue was being discussed on the radio on Sunday morning and the significance of the remittances sent back in the past made up a percentage of our wealth at the time. These people worked in the most dreadful conditions. There were interviews from the archives which indicated that on Christmas Eve these people had to get out of trenches to heat their hands from digging holes. In order to ingratiate themselves with the ganger they would go from work to the pub, buy drink for the ganger and hope they would fall into bed somewhere that night.
While many of these people got on their feet, others did not and are now living in dreadful conditions. They are often looked after by the British social services or voluntary organisations in Britain involving other Irish people, but sometimes non-Irish people. I feel at a time of great wealth in our own country that we should give some consideration to the plight of our fellow Irishmen and women living abroad.
I note the excellent work of the task force on emigration policy. It has put forward some very good proposals but I know how these things work. At any given time in any Department there are more proposals than officials or the Minister of the day can deal with at once. However, this is a proposal which needs to be driven up the agenda. According to the reports of the task force, it would not be that costly.
I was struck by the comments of Fr. Paul Byrne, former provincial of the Oblates, whom I know well and who, like me, is from Inchicore. Fr. Byrne stated that a very good report was brought forward and that hope was given that the Department of Foreign Affairs would take the lead on this matter and that various policy proposals would be put in place and initiatives taken but that nothing has happened.
I do not want to make a party political issue of this matter. The way to avoid doing so would be for the committee to deal with it on an all-party basis. We can travel to visit centres in Birmingham, London and elsewhere. We could set aside a week each year to hold formal hearings in Britain in particular, but also in the US and further afield, if we so decide. Such hearings could be held in the Irish embassy in London, for example, and the committee could decide whom it would invite to appear before it. Such individuals or groups could then put their case and inform us what is good about the emigrant community in order that we might address the needs of emigrants.
I hope there will be agreement on my proposal. I do not believe that visiting these places, either as a delegation or as individuals, has the same effect as would the rather unusual process of holding meetings there in order that we could hear about emigrants' good and bad experiences. We could also express the appreciation of a generation which has done well at home and the members of which owe much to them. We must indicate to these people that they are not forgotten and that their plight will be addressed by their representatives in the national Parliament.
I hope the motion commends itself to the committee. It is not controversial or party political in nature. Innovation is needed and that would come through holding hearings abroad once a year at which people could appear and express their concerns. In that way we could give notice to the Department of Foreign Affairs that we want the report of the task force on emigrants to be given priority and to be progressed. I formally propose the motion.
I second the motion. Everyone present has a responsibility to try to bring some degree of redress to the thousands of people, particularly those in the United Kingdom, who left this country many years ago because of the prevailing economic circumstances. Since then, these individuals have at best been ignored and at worst been cast aside by almost every political party and successive Governments in this State. I appreciate that efforts have been made and that certain moneys have been made available through particular organisations in order to provide some degree of assistance. However, the "Prime Time" programme broadcast before Christmas brought us to our senses and made us recognise that we have ignored the scale of this problem to date. We can no longer afford to ignore it.
When I first entered the Seanad in the late 1980s, there was national concern and debate about the number of undocumented Irish abroad. Unfortunately, it is again coming to the fore. I was a member of an informal Oireachtas committee which existed at the time and which was charged with considering the issue of emigration. We visited London in 1988 or 1989 to meet these people and hear about their problems. Unfortunately, 14 or 15 years later those problems appear still to exist.
As Deputy Gay Mitchell stated, this is not a party political issue. For decades, all political parties and successive Governments have been guilty of not doing enough, particularly for elderly Irish people in Britain who, if they are lucky, can read about the effects of the Celtic tiger. These individuals are entitled to feel bitter about the lack of support. We are aware that most of them worked in the labouring trades and, in many instances, they were paid in cash. If they were paid by cheque, they had little choice other than to go to the local pub to have it cashed and pass on a certain percentage of their money, in one way or another, to the landlord. As members are aware, huge numbers of them could not access social welfare benefits or health services.
In their autumn years, we must provide them with some degree of redress. We have the means and mechanisms to do so. I accept that the economy may not be as strong as it was 12 months ago but it is still very healthy and we should have adequate resources to provide some assistance.
It is a question of where we start. I agree with Deputy Gay Mitchell's suggestion that we hold hearings in Britain, in particular. Irish communities in other countries are facing broad difficulties in terms of immigration laws in other countries. However, those in Britain have been obliged to deal with more problems than most. These individuals worked all of their lives in the United Kingdom and their employers never took care of their social security and other entitlements for them. They now live at a level of subsistence. Various proposals as to how this could be resolved have been put forward. However, we must begin by listening to these people. They have been ignored in the past and the idea of holding hearings and reaching out to them will demonstrate the goodwill of the committee, the Oireachtas and the Government. Hearings would represent a positive step.
I wish I knew the solution. However, going to meet these people, who have been sadly neglected for generations, and indicating our willingness to do so on an annual basis, would at least offer them hope.
I commend the proposal in terms of my belief that something should be done. However, I am not sure if holding hearings is the correct route to take. I emigrated in the early 1960s and spent two years living, in Cricklewood and other areas, among the people to whom Deputy Gay Mitchell referred. I watched the "Prime Time" programme and I believe that seeking to hold hearings in Britain represents an overreaction.
We should first meet a representative of the DION committee which is working with local authorities to distribute assistance. Many of the members of that committee are not Irish and are looking after their own areas. That is the correct way to proceed, in my opinion. We could invite the Irish ambassador to come before us to explain how the DION committee works.
There has been a drastic change in England in recent years. The Irish who have done well have moved away from the traditional areas where they congregated, such as Maida Vale, Cricklewood, etc., in London and out into the suburbs. Those who were left behind are distributed among communities which are not Irish-based. Many of these individuals have social problems because they never had proper homes and always stayed in digs, the standard of which often encouraged them to go out drinking at night. They had no other way of socialising and they never became integrated with society in London.
I regularly return to the areas to which I refer and I have discovered that the people there have become socially integrated with other communities, usually by congregating at betting offices, etc. There is nothing wrong with betting offices. I am a regular contributor to the widows and orphans' fund of the bookies' association.
We must consider the practicalities. Are we raising people's hopes that something will be done immediately, when action cannot be taken until we become familiar with the structures of the DION committee and see how they work? It is important to discuss the matter with the DION committee in the first instance. I commend Deputy Gay Mitchell's proposal, but we must consider the practicalities involved.
I am very interested in the motion and, like my colleague, I commend Deputy Gay Mitchell for putting it forward. I saw the programme and also heard the priest whom he mentioned speaking one morning on the radio. He was quite forceful and was a little disillusioned that a recommendation that had been made by the task force had not been followed through. This committee should have an input into this. I do not see any other committee that would be suitable or that would take up the matter.
It is interesting to note that the Minister for Foreign Affairs has given one third extra money this year to DION and other agencies in pursuit of the aims set out by the task force for emigrants. That is very good and is proof of good promise and good practice.
I do not know about the US and other areas but in the major cities and suburbs of the UK where emigrants went to work originally there is a body of Irish people who, in the main, remained single and lived their lives in digs. They are now approaching the autumn of life, or whatever kind of euphemism one wants to use, and do not appear to have stability in their arrangements or coherence to their lives.
We thank the DION committee and the various sub-committees through whom it allocates its funding. I have met with them several times when in the UK and indeed in the US once or twice during St. Patrick's Day celebrations, but that is all very fleeting and one is quickly gone again. The idea is a good one and this committee should lend its name to it. I do not know if the people to whom we are directing our goodwill and whom we wish to gather together would come to hearings in a formal sense in the embassy or maybe a hotel where we might take a few rooms and set up. That arrangement might be too formal for them to tell us about what manifestly is a want in how their lives are conducted now and how they might want to lead them in the future.
If we worked firstly through the Department of Foreign Affairs - we cannot go running off to DION - we could then get the DION people to come to Dublin or we could go to them. The ambassador to London would have a fair knowledge of all the Irish people either adrift or not adrift within the wider UK community. I do not think Deputy Mitchell is hung up on the hearings idea. I gathered from what he said that he is more into asking what we could do to help, and I commend that idea. How we go about it is another subject. One of my own ideas would be to act through the Department of Foreign Affairs and then move on to DION, meeting with it first.
I would then like to meet people personally. Sometimes one gets a filtered view when one acts wholly through committees or officials, no matter how estimable those people are. If we can devise some means whereby we as a committee could actually talk to "the dispossessed", that would be a good way to go about it. I commend the idea.
Perhaps we could speak to the Department of Foreign Affairs and DION. The proposal generally is a good one as regards meeting with the representatives of those working in the area and those based in London, Birmingham or wherever else. If we have hearings that are open to individuals we could not cope as a committee, but we could have hearings with groups who represent the needs of emigrants.
I am dealing through my own clinics on the north side of Dublin with some people who came from the country originally and are now getting resettled back into rural areas. There are a lot of difficulties in getting that to happen and getting the administrators to meet their needs and not put obstacles in their way. There is no doubt that this has stimulated a very interesting discussion. We will go ahead and speak with the Department of Foreign Affairs. The Minister has put in an extra €1 million and has to decide how to spend this and use it. The DION committee will presumably advise on that.
We should meet with the DION committee. I have no objection to providing that annually we should meet with representatives groups. If we were to say in the motion that the committee would hold annual hearings or meetings with the representative groups in the UK and the US, starting this summer or as soon as is practicable, to discuss the issues as set out facing Irish emigrants with the view——
I still think we need to meet actual people rather than meeting committees.
Yes, but if we say we are to hold hearings, there are thousands of such people. We are not setting up a redress board or something like that. We do want to know what people's needs are in order to follow them up.
The suggestions range from having a meeting first with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the DION committee and then meeting with the groups.
The ambassador also.
Yes, and the ambassador. These parties would be very much in touch as they are working with these groups all the time. Perhaps Deputy Gay Mitchell would like to comment.
I would be very happy to meet the ambassador, DION, people from the Department or anybody else. I would be happy to modify this amendment to state, "annual hearings or meetings" in Britain, and that we would meet the ambassador, DION and the Department. I would be happy with that.
Question put and agreed to.