Independent Tipperary TD Seamus Healy says Government & FF 'undermine our neutrality'

Seamus Healy TD has condemned what he terms a  “new alliance with British and French Navies to push refugees back to ‘Hell on Earth’ Libyan detention camps in the Dáil. 

"The flight of desperate refugees across the Mediterranean from Libya and the rest of north Africa is reminiscent of the Famine,” said Deputy Healy. “During its ten years from 1845 to 1855, 2.1 million desperate Irish people fled across the high seas in the hope of finding a better life abroad. Imagine if those 2.1 million people had been stopped and forced to return to Ireland. That is what Operation Sophia is now doing in the Mediterranean.”

An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has defended the EU’s Operation Sophia, which the Naval Service will now participate in, saying it has a UN mandate and is supported by the Government and Dáil.