Hear, hear.

I rise to address the harrowing news we have received from Belfast today, where a local man is in a critical condition after surviving what appears to be an attempted beheading by a man believed to be a Sudanese national, confirmed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I express my praise to those community members who bravely intervened to save his life at great risk to their own. I hope the House will join me in offering our prayers for his safety and survival. The investigation is ongoing and the motives are unclear. Those involved are unnamed and the attacker's status has yet to be confirmed but two things remain clear. The first is that reckless migration policy is putting lives in danger. We have seen this here with the murder of a young Ukrainian refugee, the stabbing of young children near Parnell Street, the beheading of two gay men in Sligo and the terrorist assault on our own An Garda Síochána last year. Most recently we have seen the brutal murder in Galway of the Iranian mother of two, Masuma Sohrabi. Let us remember her name today, her partner standing accused.

It is true enough that we already have problems with violent crime in this country. If anyone is still questioning the dangers of uncontrolled migration to the safety of our citizens, I must ask what more proof they need. Will there ever be evidence that will satisfy them or will they continue to stick their head in the sand while blood is spilled on our streets? The second thing that is clear is that we cannot neglect the risk Northern Ireland poses in terms of migration. We have an open border with that jurisdiction and it, in turn, has, in effect, an open border with Britain, which is struggling with the impact of years of unprecedented levels of irregular arrivals. The Government, with imminent urgency, must, first, commit to a serious programme of vetting arrivals and, second, it must do so on all-island basis. We need to reach out to Stormont and London immediately to begin forming a system to ensure we can know and control who is coming into our island.

I second the amendment to the Order of Business proposed by Senator Andrews.