Today is World Refugee Day. People will gather at 5.30 p.m. at the Garden of Remembrance today to celebrate the contribution of refugees to our society but also in sadness and in anger at the policies of fortress Europe which are responsible for the deaths of almost 30,000 human beings - men, women and children - over the past ten years in the Mediterranean.

The latest victims of that policy are the apparently hundreds of people who drowned less than 100 km from the Greek coast. At the very least, they are the victims of a conscious policy of non-assistance on the part of the Greek state and the Greek coast guard and may even be the victims of the illegal pushbacks carried out by the Greek authorities. The Greek health minister, who is a member of the Taoiseach's sister party in Greece, said a few years ago that border security cannot exist if there are no casualties and if there are no dead. This is a murderous policy. The European political establishment has blood on its hands. Will the Government abandon the policy of fortress Europe?

I read about the tragedy that happened in the Mediterranean and saw the pictures. Everyone is horrified by what occurred in the Mediterranean in that people have lost their lives at sea. My condolences go to the families of those who were lost. It is not fair to simply blame European governments and the EU. The people who are most responsible for these deaths are the human traffickers - the criminals and criminal organisations that put people on unseaworthy vessels and do not care whether they arrive alive so long as they get the money. They are the people the Deputy should be turning his fire on.