Human trafficking is new 'slave trade'

Human trafficking is the "modern day slave trade" and the State has to take action to put its operators out of business and protect their victims, the Minister for Justice has said.

Mr O'Donoghue rejected Opposition claims that the tragic deaths of the eight people in a container in Wexford was inevitable because of the "Fortress Europe" mentality of the authorities that forced people to take increasingly desperate measures. Greater access through legal migration did not stop illegal trafficking. "The reverse is the case," the Minister said.

He also told the Dβil it was thought the 13 people found in the container on Saturday had entered it in Belgium. The seal had been broken there and silicon was used to conceal that breakage.

He confirmed that a "premises" in Belgium appeared to have been used as a "staging post" and that some of the 13 may have spent "some time" there before being moved to the container.

One of the eight dead, a male, has yet to be positively identified. The remaining seven were Turkish - two men, a woman, a 10-year-old girl and three boys aged four, nine and 16.

During a special debate on the issue the Minister outlined the container's route. Loaded with furniture it left Gaffignana near Milan on November 30th and travelled via Cologne to Zeebrugge in Belgium. It arrived there on December 4th and left that evening for Ireland.

He said the lesson "we must learn from this tragedy is that we cannot lessen our vigilance in the fight against criminals who exploit vulnerable people".

Defending Ireland's immigration system as "sophisticated" and "balanced" Mr O'Donoghue said it was the most open in Europe. He said they could not pretend there were simple solutions, or the "false notions" such as there were no lawful means of entering the State, or that the issue could be dealt with by setting quotas.

Rejecting the "Fortress Europe" claims, Mr O'Donoghue pointed out that Ireland had 10,000 applications for asylum last year while Britain had close to 80,000, with similar or higher numbers in Germany and France. "That does not indicate a fortress Europe to me." Mr Joe Higgins (Soc, Dublin West) said the victims appeared to be Kurdish people, and from a country "where their nationality, language and culture were routinely repressed by the government whose ambassador the Minister had thanked for his assistance" in the case.

He rejected calls by the deputy Labour leader, Mr Brendan Howlin, and Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr Alan Shatter, that a green-card quota system, similar to the US system, should be set up for immigrants.

Mr Howlin said that if there was a hell it was surely what those people endured as they watched their friends, their family members die in that container.

He called on the Minister to simply assert that if the five survivors wished to do so they would be allowed to stay. Mr O'Donoghue, however, reiterated that when they were ready they could apply for asylum and he would treat their applications sympathetically.

Mr Billy Timmins (FG, Wicklow) said he did not encourage trafficking but thought one way to avoid such deaths would be to consider putting vent systems in truck containers.