The Minister has correctly stated that the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Bill goes to the heart of the question as to whether we have a right to exercise control over immigration to our country. Many who have engaged in debate on the issue outside the House in recent weeks clearly dispute this right. I support the right to such determination and I strongly support the Bill. I have heard most of the speeches and, in fairness, everybody has indicated some level of support, in most cases quite a fulsome level of support, for what the Minister is proposing. All states need and have effective and clear laws to deal with entry and residence of non-nationals. We must protect against abuse the sanctuary we can offer to those genuinely in need. We also need to develop support systems and an integration policy which are effective and positive towards refugees and their host communities. Regardless of whether we like it, this simple fact has implications in terms of manpower, resources and accommodation. Many people who have expounded on the issue in recent weeks are either not aware of such fundamental requirements or choose to ignore them. Even regarding the situation in Lower Mount Street, which no one wants and no one could have foreseen, there were issues of staff training, the provision of accommodation and all types of support issues for the people involved.
I echo Deputy Eoin Ryan's words that many of us wanted to contribute to the debate and did not have the opportunity. It is difficult to believe that some commentators could be as gullible as they have shown themselves to be in recent days. I do not ascribe much blame to the photogenic Deputy from the leafy suburbs who succumbs to the temptation to adorn a front page or a hard-working representative from Dublin 7 who articulates the view of his constituents. I congratulate them both for their political acumen, but the passion with which both made their points of view underlines a genuine concern. It is interesting that an analysis of what they had to say brings one to the inevitable conclusion that their views are remarkably close but are made, perhaps, with a difference of style. I find myself disagreeing equally with both of them. However it is nothing a dollop of common sense on a Bill such as this and one or two others would not cure in the short to medium term.
There are aspects of the situation regarding asylum seekers and refugees which need to be thrashed out more fully than has been possible. This is in part due to the fact to which I am sure the Minister would point, that for a period of years before he came to office, much more could have been done and that the numbers now being attracted to Ireland are considerably greater than one could reasonably have anticipated. As many speakers said, this is due in no small measure to the huge improvements in the economy. However, it is also due to practical considerations such as the fact that access routes have been opened and that many individuals who use them suffer an appalling level of amnesia and have no idea from where they came or how they came to be here, although, in the majority of cases, they seem to have contacts here. This Bill addresses a reality away from which we cannot walk however fashionable it might be to do so or politically correct it might be to go the opposite way. We must face up to the facts.
One part of the debate which needs to be developed further is how one might reasonably allow asylum seekers and refugees access to work. The fundamental question of the dignity of the immigrant comes into play. The perception of the host community would in most cases be appreciably improved if access to work could be more readily arranged. The issue of the cost to the State, to which a number of Deputies have referred, would also be improved. It would be a great step forward if, by some means in the process of determination, asylum seekers could be afforded the right to work in a controlled environment and that the experience of that could be taken into account in determining their application.
From experience, I have reservations about the record of the visa office and visa appeals office. Cases such as a doctor I know who served in the Southern Health Board and Mid-Western Health Board areas without his wife and children being allowed access to the country or another whose parents are not allowed entry reflect poorly on us. I have no doubt that those who make the decisions are as humanitarian as anyone in the House and take on board all views. I know it is not precisely an immigration or refugee issue as such, but it is one of the areas where we could take a considerably more charitable approach which would be equally as pragmatic as what we are doing and, certainly in public relation terms, a lot more acceptable.
I represent a constituency which has had by far the highest influx of refugees relative to the population of any in the country. I meet a number of them at various times in my constituency office. I have been fooled by a good few of them and the people who have worked with them, in honest discussion, would say that they too have been fooled by them. However, of the large number with whom I have dealt, my experience is that the vast majority are genuine. They have had good reason to flee the regimes which operate in the countries they left. In general, the experience of the people of Ennis and its environs has been fairly positive. There have been experiences not dissimilar from that illustrated by Deputy Gerry Reynolds and it only takes the occasional occurrence or the activities of relatively few to make people hostile to a host of innocent people. Those activities are engaged in by relatively few people from a small number of states, but if one were to say exactly where, it would leave one open to the charge of racism against those people. Unfortunately, that is where a great many difficulties arise.
In Ennis, about 317 asylum seekers and refugees avail of the services of the State and about 135 claims are made weekly on behalf of these people, so they are mainly family groups of an average of three. I presume they are all genuine, but the level of service provided to them by the agents of the State is as good as is available to anyone from Ireland. No one taking a dispassionate and objective view could make a negative accusation against the Minister, the Minister for Health and Children or anyone who oversees the level of services made available to them. That has been true for people in that situation over the past seven, eight or ten years. An enormous amount of work is done by voluntary people in the Irish Refugee Council, the Red Cross and others. They do an enormous amount of work for these people. The quality of life afforded to them is as good as any of us would demand for any of our constituents and few people are prepared to face up to that fact. That is the situation in the town which, relative to its population, has had by far the highest influx over a period of 15 to 20 years.
The Minister will have seen in his constituency the treatment afforded and accorded to refugees from Kosovo. I happened to be in Killarney for a few days when the restaurateurs and hoteliers put on a meal for all the refugees. The treatment given to the refugees by people not directly involved with them belies the charge frequently made against Irish people that they are racist or have racist tendencies. On the basis of what I see in Ennis, nothing could be further from the truth. Some concern arises because people say accommodation should be made available to our own people and that we should be looking after travellers and others. It brings to mind the Biblical story where the one who turned out to have the worst record was the one most concerned about services for the poor. Perhaps that is a salutary lesson.
The Dublin Convention, which is central to what the Minister is trying to address, does not work. The experience of people in the Department who are trying to operate it would be similar. Neither does the London Convention, which precedes it and affects other countries, work. It needs to be addressed in the context of work under way on the protocols to draft the UN convention on organised crime. That convention has enormous potential. I suspect that is being dealt with within very narrow parameters by the UN and that its efficacy would be greatly improved if it were placed in the wider context of the reality of what is happening.
I welcome the fact that, at their meeting in Finland last month, the heads of Government saw fit to address some of these issues and that the Council has clearly indicated that there is a need for legislation in the area of trafficking in regard to refugees, asylum seekers and human beings generally. I commend the Minister on being the first European Minister to address this issue through legislation. We are frequently accused of being tardy, but on this occasion we are addressing an issue central to our own policy and dealing properly with people as human beings.
The Minister referred to the possibility of sanctions being imposed on carriers. That is not an entirely new idea. I recall that in the 1980s and early 1990s, an informal system of sanctions was operated in regard to Aeroflot at Shannon. Although I am not sure who imposed it, it was imposed very rigorously and, indeed, questionably on two occasions. In general, it tended to ensure that a common sense approach was adopted and that the type of floodgate problems we are currently witnessing in Mount Street do not happen. That is something the Minister should consider carefully. Of its nature, it will be difficult to enshrine this provision in legislation in a fair manner and one which will not elicit hysterical reactions.
There is no doubt that the actions of those trafficking in human beings are totally reprehensible. I echo the Minister's reference to slave traders and I will make no complaint whatsoever about the severity of sanctions he may propose in that regard. It is quite proper that this offence be created in section 2 of the Bill and I welcome it.
On the issue of the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, we could learn from the experience of the programme refugees in this country over a 20 year period. As I recall, 220 Vietnamese people came to Ireland as programme refugees in 1979 and others subsequently came from Bosnia some seven or eight years ago. An excellent and very detailed report has been produced on the manner in which these people have been assimilated and, indeed, on how they have failed to be assimilated in many instances. In some senses, their experience provides a salutary lesson on how we should approach this process. Unfortunately, the degree of pressure which will be exerted in the short-term because of the number of people coming into the country makes it difficult to develop a long-term planned approach. We are currently responding to an urgent short-term need. It would be worthwhile to examine the experiences of programme refugees and other people who came to Ireland under the family reunification scheme to see what lessons we could learn. There may be some room in the mosaic of legislation and other activities which the Minister is proposing to consider that experience closely in terms of the type of assimilation we could reasonably expect. It is often the case that many refugees cannot wait to return to their own countries, as was the case with many of the Kosovar refugees who stayed in the Killarney and Cork areas.
I welcome this Bill because it addresses this difficulty in a solid, sensible manner. The Bill must be set against the background of the charitable manner in which we have dealt with the people who have come here, in spite of the negative aspects that has had for the country. We inherently want to adopt a Christian approach to this issue and our actions are informed by the experience of our relatives and friends over many years. This Bill is one of the most important introduced in this area.
