Senator Paul Gavan said in 2019 that Ireland had “failed to show solidarity” with migrants by not taking in enough people in previous years.

“The Government of Ireland must now begin to show true solidarity and significantly increase the numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers it is prepared to resettle,” he said.

He added that over five years, only 2,555 people had been taken in despite a pledge at the time to accommodate 4,000 migrants.

“To put these two pitifully low figures in context this year alone, 77,000 human beings have crossed the Mediterranean in a desperate journey seeking refuge and protection,” he said. “These figures for my country are frankly abysmal and a stain on our record in the field of human rights.”

He was speaking during a debate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Eur­ope, where he called for action to prevent migrants drowning in the Mediterranean. His comments are also published on the Sinn Féin website.

Mr Gavan pointed to the annual military expenditure in the EU being €200bn and suggested a portion of this should be diverted to a programme for refugee resettlement across Europe.

“But instead of helping mig­rants, we are now committed to spend more than €30bn a year on border security to keep them out,” he said.

Sinn Féin has been criticised for hardening its stance on immigration in recent months, and the party believes Ireland should opt out of the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.

“Sinn Féin are opposed to open borders,” the party’s justice spokesperson Pa Daly said in March. “We believe Ireland needs a well-managed migration system, one that is fair, efficient and enforced.”

A Sinn Féin spokesperson said Mr Gavan’s statement from five years ago was regarding promises at the time to help with the “human rights travesty unfolding in the Mediterranean”.

“Ireland has since assisted over 100,000 refugees from Ukraine, and as a consequence of this, as well as an increased number of people seeking asylum arriving in Ireland – without any plan to properly resource the international protection system – the situation has changed utterly,” they said.