Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is clear that the Government is hellbent on opting in with no discussion. It took eight years to come up with the pact and the Minister is telling Deputies that we had ample opportunity in that time to come up with solutions, questions, Topical Issues or whatever. The Government is hellbent on ignoring the Irish people. It got its message from them loud and clear in the referendum, so why rush this through? What kind of discriminatory feeling does the Government have towards the Irish people? We are going to be forced to take thousands upon thousands of migrants inside our border. The Minister keeps saying that is not the Government’s intention, but it does intend to opt into the pact. The Government will not put the question to the people because it knows what answer it will get – it got a freagra uafásach in the referendum – so it has decided to just put it to the Houses of the Oireachtas in a set amount of time and to use the Government’s contrived majority to ensure it passes. People are concerned about this further ceding of our national sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats in the European Commission.

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