Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Is it not clear that this year's sectarian tensions point to significant sections of Protestant and Catholic working-class populations, especially the young members of those populations, being seriously alienated? Is it not clear that the Good Friday Agreement has not delivered for them by bringing an end to unemployment, poverty, the housing crisis and other problems? How it could be otherwise when the power-sharing Executive is merely a conveyor belt for Tory-Liberal austerity, as our Government is in conjunction with the troika? Is it not the truth that the main political parties played the sectarian card on a regular basis this summer and used marches and emblems, etc., to do so? That is the reality. Can I put it to the Taoiseach that it must be a bad joke to bring in a right-wing member of the American Republican Party to bring the communities of Northern Ireland together? The American Republican Party has fostered more inequality and polarisation and imposed unequal suffering on the American people since slavery and has not done anything for the North of Ireland. Is it not clear that sectarianism cannot be overcome other than by working-class communities coming together to direct their energies to mobilising for the eradication of the problems and policies that create such poverty and hardship?

See this speech in context