President calls for ‘better system’ for refugees in Ireland

Ireland needs a better way of dealing with incoming refugees and migrants and changes should be made to the existing system soon, President Michael D Higgins has said.

Speaking in New York, where he is participating in the United Nations General Assembly, the President also said an effective model for dealing with refugees is needed at a European level.

Taking questions from reporters at an event to thank Irish staff working at the UN, the President said there is a “general consensus” that Ireland needs a better system of dealing with refugees and pointed to the Government review of the direct provision system.

“There is now happily consensus, if you like, that we need to handle the whole question of our direct provision model, (it) is one that the Government is looking at,” Mr Higgins said. “I think there is a general consensus that we need a better system and the quicker we have it the better.

“The Taoiseach and other spokespersons as well have fairly consistently said that we are a people who are a migrant people ourselves. We have in the near history the experience of so many of our people leaving in fragile crafts and crossing the Atlantic and losing their lives.

“But you have also where you have now where Irish people have established themselves and help build up the United States. That’s been very important for us to realise that it is not a time for resiling in any sense from our international obligations.”

He discussed the migrant crisis at a meeting with billionaire philantrophist George Soros. The pair also discussed globalisation and the link between economics and philosophy.

Earlier this week, EU justice ministers adopted a quota style system for accepting refugees but, in an unusual move, it was passed by qualified majority voting, with four member states opposed the move and one abstaining.

EU leaders also agreed a package of measures to tackle the crisis at an emergency summit in Brussels, although there was a move towards a more hardline position to mollify central and eastern European countries.

The President, who also spoke on Saturday at a UN session on “fostering sustainable economic growth, transformation and promoting sustainable consumption and production”, said moves towards a common European position are “very important”

“Even if it is a qualified majority moving towards achieving a common european position is very important. If we had an effective refugee policy at European level in place, a strategy if you like for dealing with migrant issues, so much could be achieved.

"We have to be in a position to having structures in place that are able to do a number of things. First if all there is no doubt that if the European Union and other regional bodies - remember we are at the UN - were able to make positive proposals in relation to the resolutions of conflicts.

“For example, in the specific case of Syria, that would have enormously valuable. Then there is the issue of the funding of those. Remember many of those migrants, in their first instance, probably want to stay near home. We have seen a shortfall in the funding necessary for some of the United Nations agencies in looking after food.

“Then take the next question about the whole manner in which people can travel and how they are to be managed within societies in terms of both for themselves and for their host. Sometimes people forget that given the demographic structure of Europe that in order to keep the demand in relation to the pensions costs, for example in Germany, it needs about a quarter of a million people who are taxpaying migrants to arrive and so on.

“You then look at the whole question of how in fact you are to fund this properly. There are agin ideas that will emerge in relation to how to do that but it means putting together a whole set of approaches that can address the issue.

“Everyone gains when the human family cooperates by having codes and standards by which you treat people.”