Last week the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration delivered a report on the Government's proposed legislation to ratify the European migration pact. The committee recommended that the Government, on Ireland's behalf, should opt out of most of the provisions of the pact, the reason being that they did not believe it was credible that Ireland could actually deliver on its obligations under the pact, particularly to open detention centres and deal with all applications within three months. This is completely unreal. When the pact was rushed through this House with the aid of a guillotine last year, those of us who opposed it said it was a fundamentally dishonest and impractical way of dealing with asylum seeking in Europe.

Yesterday, the British and Danish Governments went to Strasbourg in the hope of persuading the European council on human rights and ECHR authorities in Strasbourg to reopen the whole question of asylum seeking and the application of the Geneva Conventions, which are at the moment being used to mask a massive international racket. It is an economic racket, a criminal racket and a legal racket. Every single person who comes to Ireland claiming asylum, almost without exception, travels through a safe country. Well over 90% of those who get here - probably close on 100% of them - travel through safe countries. Ireland is a destination of choice for asylum seekers for other reasons and it is purely economic migration that lies at the bottom of it. Family reunification further complicates it.

Since adopting the charter of fundamental rights, the EU has guaranteed asylum to people who are not EU citizens in respect of seeking asylum in Europe. That was a fundamental mistake but it handed competence to the Court of Justice of the European Union to supervise the imposition of asylum law right across the Union. We are spending €1.3 billion every year housing asylum seekers, the vast majority of whom are not entitled to asylum. This racket has to end. If it is not ended, it will damage and corrode the very foundations of the European Union. This is why I say to the Leader that we need a debate in this House. I am not parroting Donald Trump's views. I have been saying this for a long time. If Europe does not face up to the fundamental error it made in respect of asylum, and the fundamental uselessness of its migration pact, the solidarity of Europe and its continued existence as a democratic partnership of member states is very severely threatened. I ask for a debate in this House on the future of Irish and European policy in respect of persons claiming asylum in this State.