Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Mr. Cox to the Chamber. I have a couple of items on the back of some of the questions asked. We had Dr. Anthony Coughlan here last week from Trinity College, and I am sure Mr. Cox is familiar with him. Mr Cox pointed out that the majority of our trade is not within the EU if the UK is taken from it, with 41% in the European Union. Dr. Coughlan made many arguments and Mr. Cox is probably familiar with them. There is the idea that the benefit to us of being part of Europe is more in the past and now that we are net contributors, the suggestion is we are really just paying to be part of a market, despite us doing trade with many other countries. The argument was to do a deal with the UK and so on. As we are net contributors, is it a fair statement that staying part of the market, with the freedoms flowing from being part of the European Union, is worth paying into the European Union fund?

The corporation tax issue has been referred to and Mr. Cox has answered it. We are discussing the future of the European Union in the context of Brexit and the issues that have been thrown up. Mr. Cox made a point earlier that populism and anti-European sentiment seems to have been halted, at least when we consider the result of the French and Dutch elections. We take some comfort from that but issues remain, no more than those which gave rise to the likes of Mr. Trump assuming power in the United States. Such matters concern citizens and it is a question of where they put their faith. A dominant issue is immigration into the European Union and of people within it. We only have to look at the recent outrageous tragedies in Manchester, London and Paris, with what happened in Brussels and Paris.

While upholding our democratic values - our rights of movement and so on - how do we ensure that those same values are protected because these attacks are challenges to our freedoms? We must get down to the nitty-gritty and acknowledge that the threat does not just come from outside our member states but it also comes from within. How do we do this effectively? We hear Theresa May talking about human rights not standing in her way. Are we talking about curtailing civil liberties? Of course, many of our civil liberties are the antithesis of what the likes of ISIS proclaim. They proclaim there should be no such freedoms. We are really at the opposite end to what they proclaim. We also know that the conversation around the separation of religion and state is really a western conversation. Therefore, when we look outside to see the patterns of behaviour that influence people who become radicalised to act here, we know they do not see things the way we see them. We take these things for granted. We were brought up to recognise the authority of the State and the freedom of people to exercise their religious views.

To what extent should we start to call out situations or viewpoints that do not accord with our democratic values? To what extent is radical speech protected by the freedom of speech, which is also something we value? Where should the line be drawn? How would Mr. Cox say we can protect ourselves and the rest of the European in a practical way and ensure that this issue does not feed into anti-immigrant sentiment, because immigrants are not a problem? Immigrants have built up Europe, no more than our own emigrants built up the United States. How do we show people that we are actually acting to deal with the legitimate concerns because there is clearly a problem?

I remember reading a survey carried out on British Muslims in The Sunday Timesin the last year. In terms of general dispositions and viewpoints of the rest of the nation, the data showed British Muslims had quite different viewpoints. The article presented the idea that there is a nation within a nation. We facilitate people self-determining but at what point should we assert that everybody - whatever his or her religion - is a stakeholder? Should we state nobody should just passively benefit from the freedoms of the European Union, Europe and western democracy but everybody must be called to the table to actually fight against anything-----