The Irish Government has formally committed to accepting 200 child refugees from camps in Calais following a Dáil vigil organised by the ‘Not On Our Watch’ campaign.

IMPACT supported the vigil at which Mags O’Brien, chair of the ICTU Global Solidarity Committee, called on the Government to provide asylum to 200 unaccompanied children from refugee camps in Calais. "Ireland has to be dragged sometimes. I’ve been on campaigns where we’ve pleaded and we’ve begged for what should be a civil right - for instance, divorce was one of the main issues I was involved in. I’m tired of saying that Ireland has to wake up to the fact that there are human rights and that we have to respect the human rights of everybody,” she said.

Mags said global solidarity is always a trade union issue. “I’m sure you know the old saying ‘an injury to one is the concern of all’. A wrong done to any country is a wrong done to us. This is a trade union issue. Some of our people went to Calais recently and were appalled, upset and so angered by what they saw: that’s part of why we’re here supporting this. This should not be happening in our name or on our watch.

I am so tired of having to ask politicians for something that should be granted as a right to people. I think it’s a crying shame and a disgrace that, in this day and age, we can’t even take 200 children. Until we get that far we can forget about having the wider debate about the fact that we are all immigrants really, or that we are a country that has lost a lot of our population to emigration. I’m the child of immigrants and I know exactly what my parents went through when they first moved here. I just think we have to keep saying ‘not in our name; not on our watch," she said.

A post on the campaign’s Facebook page from last Thursday states that the passing of the Not On Our Watch motion “would also not have been possible without the support of those organisations including the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and many NGOs.”