Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

This is about Uber. I pay tribute to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for its excellent work in publishing the Uber leaks. It revealed a major corporation, valued at $44 billion, setting itself up as a disrupter, a modern company and so on, but in reality pursuing the old, tried and tested methods of major capitalist corporations.

One, it highlighted major exploitation of workers. These people provide nothing more than an app and made themselves incredibly rich, by driving down terms and conditions across the world.

Two, Uber used money to buy political influence and was willing to go to any ends to achieve its aims. It is worth quoting one of Uber's people who said, "Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted." He called for a counter protest to be organised in Paris against taxi drivers in order to create violence to drive through Uber's programme. What did it look like in this country? It looked like Uber writing the manifesto for Fine Gael. The election manifesto of 2016 states, "New platforms are being developed that allow everyone to earn extra income in this sharing economy." It sounds great. Is it accurate, as John Moran claims and Uber accepts, that this was effectively written by Uber? Did Fine Gael or Uber write it? It was an incredible case of corporate capture by the largest political party in Ireland at the time. I have another question. Does that continue? Is lobbying ongoing? Is there a relationship between lobbying and the statement of the leader of Fine Gael, the Tánaiste, a month ago when he again said that Uber could be brought into Ireland, going against the advice of the National Transport Authority, NTA?

The third point, which we will perhaps go into later, is the fact that much of the lobbying went unregistered.

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