Aontú believes that we as a country should do our best to help those who are fleeing war and violence. We believe that there are many people who come to Ireland and make a really valuable contribution to our society and that there are many essential sectors that would not function properly if we did not have these people here. We believe that everybody who is here should be treated with respect if they are here legally and we believe that the colour of a person's skin is of no more significance than the colour of their eyes. Six years ago, we in Aontú called for a respectful conversation on the issue of immigration and we were slammed by every other political party here in the Dáil. We were accused of damaging cohesion. We stated that if we did not have a respectful conversation on the issue of immigration, that conversation would not disappear. It would just get pushed underground and be used by bad actors for damaging reasons in this country. Now we see that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin have done a significant U-turn on the issue and are calling for change, and we welcome that. However, there are four other political parties in this Chamber that continuously seek to shut down conversations around this issue. There are conversations happening on immigration in nearly every house in the country, in every pub, in every sports ground and in every workplace at present. How can it be that there are going to be conversations about this important issue practically everywhere except in the democratically elected Parliament? It does not make sense. We need to have an open and respectful conversation about this issue. We need to give leadership to people on this issue. The Government's handling of this has been chaotic so far. We have a common travel area with Britain. Under the current situation, that means we cannot have a big disparity between the regulations in this State and the regulations in Britain. If we have a big disparity, the movement of people will then follow the path of least resistance in terms of regulations. Aontú believes there should be an Irish sea border in relation to the movement of people in the same way there is an Irish sea border with regard to the movement of goods. We believe an Irish or British citizen should be able to travel on both sides of these islands with freedom, but if people are coming to these countries to seek asylum, they should apply when they move from one island to another. Right now, the Government does not know how many people are coming from Britain through the North of Ireland into the South, or how many people are leaving because there are no exit checks. The situation is in chaos, unfortunately.

Sentiment score: 0.02