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

Could the Commissioner tell us how on earth the EU can construe that charging for water is supposedly "established practice" when it is clear that when the water framework directive was introduced, established practice here was to pay for water through central taxation and not through user charges? By no stretch of the imagination could anyone conclude that it has since become established practice because nobody is paying the charges and the electorate made its view very clear in the most recent election. If the Commission fails to grasp that, is it not deepening the democratic deficit that is growing between citizens and the EU?

My next question concerns fortress Europe and foreign policy generally. Again, I hear the one-sided and partial criticism from voices here and throughout the EU of what is undoubtedly the appalling behaviour of Russia in Ukraine and Syria, where its actions in Aleppo in supporting the Assad regime are beyond disgusting. However, are member states of the EU and, in the case of Ukraine, Europe itself not responsible as well for interfering in that country and, essentially, reigniting the Cold War with Russia by having ambitions in eastern bloc countries? Members such as France, the UK, Denmark and others, including its big ally, the US, are also responsible for bombing Syria and killing innocent civilians, have been involved in staggering levels of arms sales to regimes like the Saudi regime and continue to treat with the Egyptian regime, which tramples on human rights on its country, and say nothing about that.

Is it not an appalling vista for the EU, which claims to be an attempt to ensure that we do not have a return to the horrors of the 1930s, to have concentration camps with razor wire and barbed wire surrounding them penning in the most desperate and vulnerable people at Calais and on the Greek islands? There is no other word for them. They are concentration camps. When one thinks about the numbers the EU has talked about accepting - 160,000 people - in light of the millions displaced in Jordan or its attempts at outsourcing the issue to a Turkish regime the human rights record of which is beyond disgusting in terms of its treatment of its own people, one must ask whether it is developments of this type that have led to the deep and growing disillusionment with and alienation from the EU?