Taoiseach anticipates ‘more focused response’ to migration

Taoiseach Enda Kenny anticipates "a much more focused response'' from the emergency meeting of EU leaders on migration in Brussels on Thursday.

He told the Dáil there was a need for greater surveillance, more activity, humanitarian relief and search-and-rescue.

"From a political point of view, the challenge as to the causes of the desperation of so many people to leave for Europe has to be dealt with in the bigger political field,'' he said.

Mr Kenny said that was “an enormous challenge’’.

The Taoiseach was replying to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams who said the people involved were being persecuted and fleeing for a better life. "They are trying to get a better place to live,'' he said.

Mr Adams said people had been horrified at weekend news reports of the deaths of an estimated 900 people in the Mediterranean. Many had died because unscrupulous traffickers locked refugees, including women and children, in the hold of the ship that sank, he said.

He said some 1,500 people had drowned on their way to Europe this year; 50 times more than at this point last year.

“There are reports of other ships having sunk in the past 24 hours,’’ Mr Adams added.

Mr Kenny said a march was underway from Strokestown in Roscommon, to the east coast, commemorating the 1,490 people who walked the route during the Famine and boarded coffin ships for Canada, with more than 700 dying.

“A point made yesterday was that this replicates what is happening in the Middle East,’’ he said. “This is simply appalling in the sense of humanity.’’

Mr Kenny said there was a deeper and much more challenging problem in the vast countries where many people were being treated savagely by warring factions, a problem that was not confined to Libya.