Aontú TD for Mayo, Paul Lawless, has today introduced a Bill in the Dáil seeking to withdraw Ireland from the EU Migration Pact.
Speaking, this afternoon, Deputy Lawless said: “It was an honour today to introduce a bill before the house – to remove Ireland from the EU migration pact and to restore Irish sovereignty over its borders. The government’s decision to opt into the EU migration pact was reckless. When the EU Migration Pact was voted on in the Dáil it passed by a very slim majority of just seven votes. By my calculation 59 of the TDs who voted that day are no longer TDs having either lost their seats at the last election or retired from politics. Newly elected TDs like myself have never had the chance to vote on this issue yet. We are the ones mandated – all of us – by the sovereign people of Ireland to make the laws of this country, and to regulate immigration”
Deputy Lawless continued: “The previous government ceded a lot of that sovereignty to Europe when they signed us up to the EU Migration pact, even though the government doesn’t know how much it’s going to cost us in terms of fines from Europe. That is why we in Aontú are bringing this bill today – to try to reverse that decision, and to allow us to opt-out of the pact. Poland has been given an exemption from the pact on the grounds that they already have a million Ukrainians, we should be exempt too given that we have over a million foreign born residents in our country and have the worst housing crisis in generations”.
“23% of Ireland’s population is foreign-born. This is not sustainable. The rapid population growth we are experiencing is putting huge pressure on our housing, health and justice systems. The people are with Aontú on this issue. The volume of correspondence I’ve received on the EU Migration Pact was unbelievable. 75,000 people signed a petition on the Aontú website in recent times calling on the government to exercise our right to opt-out. I hope people will lobby their TDs ahead of the vote on our Bill in the coming months” concluded Lawless.
