Council of the European Union Decision: Motions
Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

I have just come from a meeting of the foreign affairs committee where we were discussing the diaspora. We were discussing some of the effects that the policies designed to create a climate of non-welcome in Ireland for migrants are also creating for our returned emigrants and for Irish citizens when they seek to return. I refer to policies such as the changes to our homelessness supports whereby if people do have not habitual residence, they will not be allowed access emergency accommodation. They are the kinds of things that will affect those who are returned because now we have a situation where Irish people are also being returned involuntarily to Ireland from places such as the United States, which has also engaged in its part of the international clampdown on migration, despite the fact that all of our economies deeply depend on workforces that can move and can travel. I refer, similarly, of course, to the measures in respect of family reunification - restricted measures that will make it very hard for those who want to return to Ireland to care for a family member to bring a spouse with them, if that spouse happens to be a non-EU citizen and they happen to not be in a high-income job.
In that context, it is important that every measures gets looked at for how it is fitting with the piece. In the case of the European Union, additional scrutiny is needed because it has got it so wrong in the migration control funding given to Libya which led to vile human rights abuses, in the funding the European Union gave to Sudan which founds its way into the hands of the Rapid Support Forces and led to the eventual suspension of that funding because of its use for repression, and we now have a large amount of money which is attached to this deal as well. That is why I would like to know what are the safeguards. What has been learnt from the bad policies in migration control from the European Union in the past where it has given money which has been used to violated human rights, data protection, and governance and monitoring? I would like to know what are the safeguards, including for LGBTQ people who are illegal in Nigeria currently and for women, for example, in terms of the societal risks of FGM, and what measures and standards will be there in terms of the funding that is going and, crucially, what assurances are there that this agreement, including the package of supports that the European Union is offering in relation to it, will not be used to facilitate third country deportations, which are being actively supported by other EU member states.
I am glad that Ireland has not signed up to this grotesque idea of third country deportations, which are in fact human trafficking. In addition to being a colonial and racist notion, they are human trafficking on an institutional level. Ireland has not signed up to it, but several other EU countries are looking for it. Will this package, in terms of migration agreements with Nigeria, also be used to press Nigeria to co-operate with a future third country deportation role? Can the Minister assure us that there is no danger of that with this package and tell us what specific safeguards are in place in that regard? This is about safeguards at each stage and recognising that mistakes have been made in the very recent past.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29