Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will. Is it not a fact that the European Union is now facing an existential crisis of its own making and that the deep alienation felt by millions of citizens across Europe, which is growing, is due to the European Union's failures on a range of fronts? The most obvious one is the role the European Union played as austerity boot boy for the financial sector which was responsible, with the assistance of the European Central Bank and not without the active collusion of the political establishment and property developers here, for creating bubbles in this country. The European Central Bank, through its interest rate policy and then in its response to the crisis by essentially protecting the banks and the finance industry, inflicted cruel and unjust austerity, by any standards, on people who bore no responsibility for that crisis, be they in Greece, and the things done to the Greek people are beyond obscene, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and so forth. That is one of the primary reasons the alienation in the European Union is so intense.

One instance of that, which the Commissioner has intimate knowledge of, is the issue of water charges. I hear members of this committee yet again stating that we must stand up for Ireland's right to set its own corporation tax rates, but when the European Union wants to bully us in a particular direction on water charges and our right to decide democratically how we pay for water services, suddenly the voices for democracy from certain quarters over here go silent. I put it to the Commissioner that if Europe engages in boot boy or bully boy tactics when there is a clear democratic mandate in the House to get rid of water charges it is making a deep mistake that it will rue.

It will increase alienation. I cannot understand the Commission's view about the established practice when it comes to water charges. There is a big legalistic dispute-----