 Let me now turn to the subject which I've been asked to address. And it's a subject which I would say at the outset is easily associated with platitude, self-righteousness, and playing to audiences of one kind or another of the extremes of the debate on either side. In the United Kingdom, the extreme is more likely to be on the illiberal side often in the media. Here, I think we have a more liberal approach in general to migration, which is easily expressed but has to also be put in the context of the enormous challenges that migration brings. So we need a mature debate in Ireland, and I hope that this small contribution is going to have an effect in that regard. The growing toll of death in the Mediterranean of people who are desperately trying to reach Europe has created an enormous and undoubtedly and enduring humanitarian crisis. It's not going away. The use of the word crisis might not be helpful. It suggests something that is transient, but this is not a transient phenomenon. And as we see the turmoil in North Africa and in the Horn of Africa, it is self-evident that this is going to get worse rather than better and has enormous consequences as a permanent feature of our time. I think with global warming and with the crisis of hunting to describe as the clash of civilizations, which is almost appears to be happening, this is right up there as one of the big issues of our time. And it is going to affect us all. We're not living in an island which somehow off the west of Europe is immune to this. It is something that we all have to grapple with together. So it raises concerns about the policy and institutional framework available to the EU and its member states. In a single week, this past August, a week that was not on typical, more than 300 asylum seekers and migrants died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded, unsealworthy vessels. They would have been had they arrived illegal migrants in Europe. The Italian Navy saved 4,000 more. Between June and August, at least 1,600 died in the Mediterranean, compared with over 600 in all of 2013. Put in other terms, those who knowingly risk this crossing stand a 3% risk of dying. And in fact, the statistics, of course, may be worse than that, because we don't know, perhaps, all of those who have died. The odds are worse only in the South Pacific, where the risk of dying is 5%. This appalling toll of human misery tells its own story. In addition, many thousands of asylum seekers and migrants succeeded in making their way across the Mediterranean. Those lucky enough to reach Europe face a so crushing obstacle course of detention, often discrimination and the constant fear of deportation. On the other hand, can the countries of destination be expected to open borders and to allow anybody and everybody who seeks a better life to come in? It's just too facile and glib to say, yes. In total, at least 102,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to Italy alone this year. This is three times the number that arrived in 2013. Other frontline EU states, such as Spain and Greece, are experiencing similar flows. In one week in August, Spain's sea rescue service, admirably, picked up 681 people from 70 small boats crossing the Straits of Gibraltar. New arrivals also stormed the border fences in Spain's North Africa enclave of Malia. In addition, large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers in particular are in camps in Mediterranean countries. UNHCR, for example, has registered 37,000 in Tripoli and Benghazi. The current situation will not improve. The conflicts in North Africa and the failed or failing states that result, as well as turmoil further south in Eritrea, Somalia, and West Africa, give rise to a continuing issue. The situation in Ukraine may pose other risks for the EU in terms of movement of people. The impact on host countries of this vast movement of people is considerable. For example, the number of asylum seekers in Germany has risen from 40,000 in 2010 to 125,000 in 2013. Two weeks ago, I was asked to go to Berlin to address the German ambassadors, every ambassador from all around the world. This was the subject that was the main topic for the discussion of their ambassadors. It gives an idea of the priorities. And one can imagine the other priorities that German policymakers, in regard to the East and in regard to the European Union, have to face at the present time. Sweden, a country which has an admirable record in the sophistication and thinking that it has put into this area of policy, has, in recent days, as you will read in today's papers, witnessed the development of a new democratic party, which is in fact a racist party, in the least racist society that I know in Europe. The EU has 29% of the world's wealth. It hosts 9% of the world's refugees. Tiny Lebanon shelters 1 million Syrians. The EU, 100 times larger, has taken in 100,000. Europe can and should do more. But what Europe is doing differs from place to place. The challenges faced by Spain, Italy and Greece, to take three, are very different from those cowering in their wake to the north in Europe. But apart from refugees, and this is where things start getting very complicated, there is the issue of economic migrants. And the difference between an economic migrant and a refugee who, under the 1951 convention, can claim a right to stay where they end up because of persecution, becomes blurred. An economic migrant can be returned. An economic migrant then is unlikely to declare himself or herself as such, is much more likely to claim, on whatever grounds, spurious or genuine, that they are victims of persecution in order to enter the sometimes interminable process of adjudication as to whether they are actually refugees or asylum seekers or economic migrants. Now, every country in Europe is grappling with this. And learning from each other's experience and what others are doing is important. There are probably at least 246, according to the population division of the United Nations, economic migrants in the world today. In fact, if you include internal displacement as well as external, the figure is a billion over a billion. But this is, again, a blurred area because statistics may not be in any way accurate. The European response to the growing numbers of asylum seekers and migrants has been fragmented and ineffective. In some countries, they don't want to talk about it. The politicians don't want to talk about it. Because if they do talk about it, somebody has to say something which might be interpreted as being vaguely positive about migrants and their contribution. So the result is you make the subject taboo for public debate, a situation which, in my view, we are close to reaching in the context of the United Kingdom. But not just there. Everybody's afraid to say a good word about migration. So what we need is a more holistic response at national level and at European level. Not that there is a magic wand which will provide solutions to all the problems. But incrementally, we can develop our policies in a way that is more effective. The Italian government's Mare Nostrum initiative is highly commendable. So also is the Spanish humanitarian reaction to problems so close to their own border and, indeed, in their enclaves in North Africa. At national level, a new holistic response approaches demanded in many receiving countries. I don't know as much as I should about what is happening policy-wise in Ireland in terms of joining up different departments. So I'm not going to talk about it. But I do know that the development of migration policies in silos, which is what has been happening in the UN and which I've been asked to remedy, is probably reflected also at national level. The responsibility for migrants largely left in the hands of justice and home affairs, which is largely concerned with border controls, which in turn largely establishes its effectiveness by stopping people coming in, as opposed to a holistic approach which takes into account the need for a European policy, the linkages with development, the huge amounts of remittances and the value of remittances to home communities, and all of the positive aspects in terms of the contribution of migrants to what happens. So we want interaction with departments of foreign affairs, development and development, on the external front, education, labor, and social welfare on the internal front. I'm not criticizing here because I don't know whether it's happening, but I know it's happening in Germany because I'm just back from it. And there's a unit in the chancellery which is bringing together the policy areas to make them actually work effectively together. As European level, I wrote two weeks ago that we needed a dedicated commissioner for migration. I'm not quite sure what we've ended up with, because we have now a commissioner for migration and justice, I think, and at home affairs. Now what the hell that means? What it means, I don't know, because we have another commissioner for justice, we have another commissioner for home affairs, or humanitarian affairs, where this actually works, I don't know, but at least migration is in the name of the responsibility of somebody, a Greek commissioner. So it appears that it is becoming a greater focus. It should be an exclusive focus, but we're getting somewhere. We now have some confusion, but let's hope it works out well. In the EU, we've seen the substantial rise of anti-immigrant sentiment. Not as far as I've seen here, which is a remarkable tribute to Ireland, if I'm correct in my assessment. Perhaps it's because we don't have an ostensibly extreme right party in Ireland, but some would say we've had in the past, and perhaps even in the present, extreme elements of nationalism. And nationalism is associated, as we know, in Europe, both with being against Europe and against migrants. So how close we are to the development of responses that could be dangerous here, I cannot speculate upon. But maybe our own experience as a country of migrants over centuries has taught us a lesson, and hopefully it will be useful to us. But the United Kingdom has seen Europe, France has seen Le Pen, Wilders is in the Netherlands. For the first time in history, the Social Democratic Party normally, the most controlling part, substantial party in Denmark, was outvoted by an extreme anti-immigrant party. Sweden, as we see in today's paper, that most admirable of multicultural societies has a Democratic Party, which in the election, which is just taking place, is expected to make some inroads. Part of the reason for this may be wildly inaccurate perceptions about the extent of migration. In addition, there is a belief, more prevalent in some countries than others, that migrants take jobs, and that they impact negatively on fiscal resources. The OECD and the British government department's research on these subjects have come to identical conclusions. And they're unambiguous, and they're empirically justifiable. Migrants in general come for work. There are more of them who work, there are less of them unemployed in percentage terms, than is the case with the indigenous population. They do not come for benefits, their unemployment figures therefore are lower, and they contribute more to innovation per capita than the national populations around the world. The OECD figures are very interesting on all of these matters. Of course, there can be abuses, and the Germans have just announced new, and they maintain community EU consistent policies in regard to benefit shopping. So there has to be a balance in this. I'm not saying that it's all one way. I haven't seen convincing evidence of any widespread abuses of benefit shopping anywhere in the European Union. However, one thing is clear, also, and it needs to be reiterated, perhaps in the context of treaty renegotiation argued for by the British, free movement of people in Europe is not up for negotiation. It is sacrosanct as a principle of the European Union. I know I'm introducing a different subject here, namely free movement of European citizens as opposed to non-European, but I think it's important nonetheless to make that point. It's not merely inaccuracies about benefit shopping that creates negativism about migrants, nor is it simply about xenophobia and racism. There are other areas of popular misunderstanding that contribute. Incredibly, according to the German Marshall Fund, who conduct very scientifically provable surveys, the average Britain believes that 31% of the population of the United Kingdom was born outside the United Kingdom. The only place that I could find that was worse was the United States, where the figure was 43%. The average American therefore believes that nearly half the population was born outside the United States, it's beyond me how this could be the case. But perhaps, incidentally, the real figure for Britain is 11%. One third of the believed number of migrants in the country. No wonder that 53% of the British population, according to a YouGov poll on the 11th of June, rank migration as the most important policy area in British politics. More important than social welfare, more important than the economy, more important than taxation, more important than unemployment. Well, perhaps you could understand that if it was actually true that 130 or population virtually overnight had become non-British in origin. One reason for these wildly inaccurate views, which can be compared with the roughly accurate views, for an example in Germany and Sweden, is that national debate is either not happening or it's massively misinformed. No politician is prepared to say, don't be frightened about migration. We only have 11% of the total population, including all of the foreigners who were in London who were born outside the United Kingdom. They're afraid to say that because they'd be branded as being pro-immigration and they'd lose their seats. So it's, this seems to be part of the reason. Migration policy, in the UK, incidentally, there's been a subsequent analysis of this and when told the true number of migrants, the number that thought that there were too many fell from 54% to 21%. So just by going to the same people and saying to them, incidentally, your figure's wrong, you're completely bananas and thinking that 31% were born outside the country was actually 11, they then immediately changed their attitude to the whole issue of migration. So the EU, in many parts of it, has a series of major issues to confront in dealing with migration. And in some countries we badly need, not Ireland, because our demographic profile is not bad, but in many countries we need many more migrants. I couldn't remember and I shouldn't know the statistic, but I know that we need 50 million either in 20 or 30 years to keep the current dependency ratio in terms of work retirement ratios as they are today. So there are going to be huge numbers of migrants coming into the EU. We need to negotiate together with the frontline states. We need to support far more vigorously and financially the frontline states, Spain, Greece and Italy, all of whom are acting on our behalf in terms of dealing with a major crisis. And if you don't do that, what will happen is that country X or Y, and I'm not arguing that this is happening with anyone in particular, although some might say it is in one case at least, are simply taking migrants when they come off the shore and waving them through. Okay, gentlemen and ladies, off you go. No records, no nothing, massive illegal immigration all over Europe and no evidence of it. So we need to renegotiate where we have a state to negotiate with and we haven't in Libya because it's a failed state at the moment and which is the main taking off spot for those going to Italy. We need to develop holistic policies which bring together our development aid, an increased number of legal migrants, allowing more legal migrants and creating a mechanism for dealing with illegal migrants. We need to have an external policy for Europe as a whole and the European population as a whole recognizes this because in the last Euro barometer poll, this was one area where there was a massive majority in favor of saying, yes, this is a European, not a national issue. So therefore I conclude by saying both at national level where we need to bring people together and at European level we have to raise the issue of migration to the very top of the political agenda, not in a way that stokes up more negative national debate as it could do in some countries about the whole process of migration but at least to have a policy mix which brings together the issues of integration as well as the issue of dealing with the differences in the issues between migration, economic migration, and asylum and which creates a harmonized mechanism for determining whether a person is an asylum seeker or not. Finally, I would say that I do not believe that we can change definitions or should try to change fundamental definitions like the definition of an asylum seeker, freedom from persecution, somebody who is being persecuted to try and get around that type of negotiation now even if there were an argument for it and I don't see that there is will end up in an interminable decades long debate. We have the definition under the 1951 Convention we should stick with it, we should apply it, we should apply it in the same way across Europe we should negotiate abroad with the countries of origin and transit and we should create within our own societies the correct informed and integrated responses. None of this can be more than incremental. There is no magic wand, but there is an obligation whether it's Christian or humanitarian principles you believe in, they both correspond in regard to this issue. We can't allow what is now happening just to continue as it is. Thank you very much.