Independent TD for Laois-Offaly, Carol Nolan, has called on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to engage with Ireland’s EU partners to pause immigration applications.
The Independent TD says a legal mechanism needs to be found to pause the ‘unsustainable levels of immigration and international protection applications’.
Deputy Nolan was speaking after she raised the matter during Leaders Questions in the Dáil.
The Taoiseach responded by saying that Ireland had ‘no choice’ but to continue to accept all those seeking international protection or asylum within the state because of war or migration changes caused by climate change.
Deputy Nolan said: “I put it to the Taoiseach that 100 years after the birth of the Irish Free State, the Dáil, which sits at the heart of our democracy, should be a forum in which members are free to discuss issues which are of grave concern to the people we are here to represent.
“It is my hope that we can do so in a sensitive, but robust manner and that our parliament can avoid becoming a place where there are unspoken rules that discourage certain questions being raised and where group think or complicity in silence becomes the order of the day.
“For an increasing number of people, one of the issues that is demanding of more serious and frank levels of open debate is that of immigration, the impact that this is having on housing, health care and education and indeed the apparent dysfunctionality that surrounds our entire asylum application process.
“As policy issues, these must be treated like any other areas, where a clear assessment of successes and failures can be discussed. They cannot and must not become no go areas in terms of our political discourse.
“Unfortunately, that is what appears to be happening. If I try to raise concerns I am accused, absurdly and ridiculously, of trying to tear apart the fabric of social cohesion.”
“I am deeply concerned about the pressure and the anger that is building up in communities relating to the way in which the state has chosen to house those seeking international protection.
“I am more than alarmed that despite our obvious capacity deficits and the scale of the emergency, up to a hundred applicants were still in tented accommodation until a few days ago, in freezing temperatures.
“We are at the tipping point of a real and profound social catastrophe.
“The rate of people entering the country from states designated as safe by the EU is increasing by hundreds of percent in some cases.
£Our hotels are at maximum capacity. Our emergency accommodation is beyond breaking point. Our own homeless numbers are breaking records. Yet still there seems to be no plan to press the pause button.
“That is what I sought today. A commitment to engage with our EU partners to try and find some legal mechanism in which we can press pause.
“Only last week Minister of State James Browne said the following, in respect of EU immigration matters.
“Ireland supports the principle of solidarity, and we recognise that assistance is required for the Member States who face a disproportionate number of applicants.
“We agree on the need to have a sustainable, simple and flexible solidarity, which takes into account the situation in the contributing Member State that would not place a burden on their asylum and reception systems.
“The key point here is that we need a sustainable solidarity. What we have at present is not sustainable. We need an asylum system that is not burdened to the point of collapse. Yet that is what we have.
“We have to adopt a new approach particularly with respect to those coming from states designated as safe by the EU itself.
“We have to press pause. It is a painful but obvious truth that we must recognise.”
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