I cannot remember the last time a government brought forward a Bill that was so universally condemned by human rights organisations. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has said there are "substantial gaps and ambiguities ... [in the Bill] in areas that directly affect the rights and safety of ... vulnerable applicants such as children and victims of trafficking". It also said that without clear, enforceable safeguards, which do not exist at present, the State’s human rights and equality obligations will not be met. The civil society Coalition on the EU Migration Pact is made up of organisations like the Irish Refugee Council, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, LGBT Ireland and the Irish Network Against Racism and it has said, "This legislation will be a stain on Ireland’s international reputation, and it undermines the very core of what being Irish means". Everyone out there should know that in this Bill Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and your friendly, local, right-wing Independent TD are all legislating for the detention of children. Shame on them all. It should not take human rights organisations to tell us detention is never, under any circumstances, in the best interests of innocent children, but the human rights organisations are forced to scream this and still the Government does not care. Reading through the Bill and reading the reaction to it something I could not fully understand at the time makes sense, namely, why the Government shamefully put its name to a statement led by Denmark before Christmas requesting the application of the European Convention on Human Rights to migrants be reviewed. In other words, these human rights are not human rights at all but will be selectively applied rights. The changes demanded here are so far-reaching that it is not really a review of the application of the convention that is being demanded but the wholesale disapplication of human rights to migrants. The socialist Tony Benn famously pointed out the way a government treats refugees is an indication of how it would treat the rest of us if it thought it could get away with it. That is precisely what is indicated by this Bill. It is a frontal assault on human rights. In this case, it starts with asylum seekers, including young children, but if we tolerate this, our children will be next. The Minister is leading the charge in attacking the legal basis of the limited rights and limited legal equality that protect ordinary working class people and oppressed groups in this State, but internationally, he will be aware he is no leader. Internationally, he is following the lead of Donald Trump and the global far right. We have seen with our eyes in the US where this goes. First, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, came for illegal immigrants. Now, it is executing US citizens in broad daylight on the streets of America. Protesters are especially at risk, criminalised as terrorists and allowed to starve to the point of death in Britain, brutalised and hit with trumped up charges by An Garda Síochána here. It is no coincidence that this appalling Bill goes hand in hand with plans to create additional covert surveillance and interception powers for An Garda Síochána, all in the name of national security, a term the Minister's Department refuses to define, presumably so it can be interpreted as broadly as it likes. I will go into some of the worst aspects of this Bill in more detail. First, it introduces a new system of border detention to be imposed even on the children of international protection applicants. People Before Profit is fundamentally opposed to this. Migrants are not criminals. Their children are not criminals. It should go without saying that they do not deserve to be treated like criminals simply for exercising their human right and legal right to apply for asylum. Second, the Bill fundamentally undermines the right to legal representation by providing only for access to so-called legal counselling. What "legal counselling" means, we do not know. It is not defined by the Bill, but we do know for certain that it does not mean access to proper legal representation because the Bill clearly does not provide for that. Third, it imposes a series of much tighter legal timeframes without providing the resources for them to be met. It is no wonder that the Legal Aid Board is raising the alarm about its ability to cope. This apparent negligence is, of course, deliberate. The Government is on purpose creating a system that will not be fair in order to deport as many international protection applicants as possible, as quickly as possible and to hell wit the consequences. The Minister knows what the consequences will be. Even under the previous system, applicants have been deported to their deaths. In 2014, Mohamed Sleyum Ali was deported from Ireland to Tanzania where he was attacked and left to die within hours of arriving. Last June, a Congolese human rights activist disappeared after being forcibly deported and handed over to the authorities at Kinshasa airport by An Garda Síochána. This Bill will lead to more refugees being deported and then tortured, disappeared and killed. The Bill even allows for this to happen while appeals are still under way. Fourth, all provisions on family reunification have been removed from the Bill. The Minister may say they have not been finalised yet, but that is completely unacceptable. They are some of the most important protections and must be included in primary legislation so they can be scrutinised by the Oireachtas and vindicated by the courts. Family reunification is too important to be left to ministerial regulations or departmental policy. It is a question of fundamental human rights. This underlines the point that the rights of children are being trampled on and ignored by the Government. It does it to children with additional needs, teenagers with mental health problems, children exploited by big tech and used for child sex abuse imagery, and vulnerable children who fall through the cracks. It is doing it again in this Bill. It should not be allowed to get away with it.

Sentiment score: -0.14