Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have to be careful; I do not like handing it over to anybody. The issue we are dealing with, depending on who is speaking at what particular time, leaves you either hopeful, hopeless or lacking all hope altogether. We all know we are talking about sustainability and that for the SDGs to mean anything they have to be built into every aspect of what we do. That is obviously at every level, from the domestic to the international with a huge focus on the European Union because of its capacity to do good, but that is not always the case.

There is general agreement if you look at what is happening across the world. In Africa and the Middle East, there is conflict, with huge populations, destabilisation and modern day colonisation, or nouveau colonialism, and resource acquisition. That is being done specifically by the Russians and Chinese, but the western world is also making mistakes. It has basically lost the global south through its support of Israel and what is happening to the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. Beyond that, there is the mess in Syria and right across Iraq and the particular disaster that was Libya. We are dealing with the circumstances related to that.

As Deputy Howlin said, there is then this swing to the right. Sometimes it is not quite to the right, but is an element of dissatisfaction. This goes for domestic governments and the European Union. We need to tackle the issues that impact people, in particular the cost of living, poverty and intergenerational poverty. In this day and age, across the western world in particular, we are dealing with something that nobody ever talks about, which is drug addition and drug crime. It is the stuff that impacts on a day-to-day basis. Circumstances are not improving. Ms McGrath said that we can talk about African countries and overseas development aid grants and whatever, but there is still more money being paid back in debt. If we leave these places as they are, we should not be shocked that a huge number of people are going to try to leave them. There will be a huge migration issue in the future, even if every other issue, be it climate change, conflict or anything else, is specifically dealt with.

Mr. Donoghue started from the point of view of looking at the European institutions-----