In here last week for several hours, a number of TDs took up the Government on some egregious things that it is bringing in, particularly in relation to children being detained and some really negative attacks on human rights that this Bill represents. Regarding this amendment, I cannot support it as it is currently worded. I do not agree that before any accommodation is provided for the IPAS services that there would have to be this, this, this, this and this. For example, there was an IPAS centre in Blanchardstown. Nobody even knew about it. It was working perfectly well. The people there were working with the Blanchardstown Tidy Towns on a Saturday morning making the village look good. It was an outlet for them. They were trying to integrate into the community. The far right councillor in the area got word of it and whipped up a storm. This is a recipe for the far right to build in areas. It is disappointing to see this coming from Sinn Féin. The party knows that this would be a recipe for creating new far right councillors, to be frank. It is not just that, we should have a discussion about community engagement. I have no issue with that because there has to be a level of community engagement. To suggest that this would have to be done before any new accommodation could be provided is adding to the negative feeling around any international protection applicants. I raised a case last week of an international protection applicant. They were people in a local Blanchardstown hotel. They were being moved to Mayo. I raised it with the Minister. To give an example, the woman whose case I raised whose child has special needs actually had a major panic attack. She is also diabetic and became so ill that she could not be moved. She ended up being transferred to Dublin. What I am saying is that there are real live human beings and families, ordinary people from other countries, in international protection. This just further demonises people. The Government is responding to the far right by moving in a much more overtly racist direction but other parties are also responding in different ways. How to take on the far right and racism is the most important political issue in the world right now bar none. We have to call it out wherever it is. This amendment is a recipe for stoking up fear in communities. We do need discussions and community engagement of some kind. You could have discussions with different groups and different individuals in a community but to suggest that no IPAS accommodation can be provided for people just adds to the racism and fear that is operating in communities. I have a couple of things to say on this. On its own, this amendment could look quite innocent but I have seen a leaflet given out in Dublin Central that says that Sinn Féin will manage migration. To be honest, the leaflet uses some racist far-right talking points. It talks about profiteering. That is all a lot of Sinn Féin's speakers have talked about. I have heard them several times over the last week talking about people being made into millionaires and about global market forces deciding our migration policy. These really are far-right talking points. It is conspiracy stuff. There are words that are not mentioned at all in the leaflet. Racism is not mentioned at all in the leaflet distributed in Dublin Central.
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The fear being experienced by minorities in this country, people who are working and living here, is not mentioned. None of Sinn Féin's speakers have mentioned it either. If Sinn Féin were to be fair, it would concede that most of the party's speakers have used their time to talk about profiteering and all of the other problems but have never focused on the racism being generated in society. All of the facts and figures show a rise in racism. To be very clear, I primarily blame the Government. Deputy Simon Harris has tried to blame minorities and refugees for the housing crisis. That is pitiable and abominable but it is really not surprising. If Sinn Féin thinks this is going to push back against its supporters leaning into racism, it really is not. It actually just lends credibility to those ideas. Any honest assessment of a leaflet like that in conjunction with this amendment would agree. We have to point to the wealth that exists in this society. This Government has a record budget surplus but it has never used it to resolve the housing crisis. We have had a housing crisis for 12 or 13 years now, since way before the recent migration. Migration has also gone down. I have heard different speakers in the Dáil talking about deportations. Being the subject of a deportation order does not mean a person is a criminal. Some of what Sinn Féin has put in this leaflet is not in line with some of its TDs' views. Some of those TDs have taken up this issue quite well in different areas. However, this leaflet is totally disingenuous stuff. Putting this out in communities just feeds into the whole narrative of refugees being a major problem. There are 18 billionaires on this planet who control half the wealth. There is huge wealth in this country that could be used to build homes, to sort out the healthcare system and to provide the schools that we need without scapegoating minorities and people who have fled countries for the most difficult reasons. There are other parties and individuals in here who do nothing but demonise people every time migration comes up. I helped members of the Indian community organise a march last summer following attacks on Indian members of our community. Every single one of them reported a climate of increased racism in this country. All of this feeds into it. It is just very unfair. We have to call out racism wherever it is. I say to those who are meant to be standing on the left that racism is a key issue for the left. If you do not take a firm stance against it and if you start using some of the arguments of the far right and racists, you will not fight them off. I think Sinn Féin believes it will and that is why it is doing this but I cannot support this amendment. It is completely and utterly a recipe for the far right to stoke up fear and to grow in every single community in the area. If we looked through the record and counted up the words of most of the Sinn Féin TDs, we would see that they have spent their time complaining. I am not saying there are not issues in different communities and areas. There obviously are but the Sinn Féin speakers' whole thing was just an attack on Ukrainians, blaming them for a great many issues. Donegal has been a deprived county for decades.
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I am sorry; Deputy Doherty did not blame Ukrainians. Donegal has also suffered massive emigration so it could do with people coming in, but only if the investment is put in. However, Deputy Doherty never mentioned that. He never mentioned that communities could get together and demand massive investment if IPAS centres are provided. I did not hear him say that at any point.
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The last thing I would say is that-----
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We have had debates here previously about supports for Ukrainians being reduced and I also participated in a debate on the radio about that issue. We know the position of different parties in the Dáil. Sinn Féin thinks they are affecting the housing crisis. The statistics came out and showed that most of the people who were taking Ukrainians into their homes were not landlords and would never be providing accommodation.
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There were loads of statistics to that effect. I spoke in the debate at the time.
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If Deputy Doherty does not mind, his party has loads of TDs and I am sure they will all-----
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What I am saying is true.
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These statistics were provided by the Red Cross. I debated this with Sinn Féin's housing spokesperson on RTÉ radio. There is an implication that refugees are affecting the housing market. That has been said lots of times. It has been said about Donegal. They are not. Sinn Féin needs to point out the source of the housing crisis. It is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael handing things over to vulture funds. We should not blame minorities.
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I did not know I would be the next speaker. I thought there were others. Sinn Féin is advocating introducing a limit per day per asylum seeker. Does Deputy Carthy have any idea how much that would be? It could not be changed for 12 months. That is my reading of the amendment. There is profiteering in a lot of fields. Should we introduce the same amendment in terms of homeless accommodation for Irish citizens because there is profiteering in that area as well? I am a socialist. I call out profiteering all the time. I advocate for multinational corporations paying more in corporation tax than they are paying. No other party in the Dáil agrees with that but profiteering has suddenly been of central concern for the last several hours, although just on the issue of international protection. Does Deputy Carthy not see a problem with that? There are quite a lot of things that people would like to get to, such as family reunification, warrants and powers. There is a whole load of stuff here. Sinn Féin is the biggest Opposition party. It has all the TDs. If it wants to do it this way, it can. However, I ask the Sinn Féin Members to consider that there is loads of other stuff here that really deserves to be aired in the next hour and three quarters but we are not going to reach it because it seems Sinn Féin wants to have a bunch of TDs who can tell people they raised the issues of IPAS profiteering and transparency and all of these things. It is a little bit disingenuous, especially if the Deputies are going to call themselves anti-racists. There is very racist stuff coming up here that we would like to reach but all of the discussion in the last few hours has been about this issue. I cannot agree to a limit per person per day. You could very easily end up impoverishing people and leaving them living on subsistence payments. It is a very dangerous power to give to the Government.
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To clarify, obviously, I would love us to continue talking on this Bill for as long as possible. My comment was in the context that we had a guillotined Bill. I have spoken in many debates before where we judiciously picked and chose what we were going to try to be allowed to reach in the context of a guillotined Bill. It was just a bit of a silly comment. We have an hour and a half left and I just made the point that there were other things. I do not know if it is a good idea to be voting for maximum payments for homeless accommodation or for asylum or IPAS accommodation. I do not think that Sinn Féin would introduce this for homeless accommodation, for example, and there is profiteering in that as well. I just think it is quite a dangerous one and we should be moving to a nationalised sector and the State providing this in any case.
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