Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that. The Irish Presidency has committed to "work closely with the European Defence Agency". In terms of the Presidency of the EU, a neutral state, advocating this kind of stuff, I want my objections noted in that regard. When we have 25 million people unemployed billions of euro in funding should go to infrastructural development for real social progress and to employ people rather than to armaments spending and all the obscenity that involves.

I refer to the question of the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund which was commented upon earlier. In an explanatory memorandum to an earlier version of the Council regulation a document points out that while the European Union Solidarity Fund and the Globalisation Adjustment Fund have proven their utility, the maximum amount foreseen under the current financial framework has never been used. There is a proposal to decrease that but in terms of the experience of many countries, and people in this country, when I was a member of the European Parliament I was involved in trying to assist the Dell workers in Limerick access these funds. I was part of a delegation from one of the committees that spoke to the Dell workers in Limerick on that. It was hugely bureaucratic and that was the reason the amount was not taken up. Rather than cut because of that should the approach not be to eliminate the bureaucracy and make it much more quickly accessible to the workers who need it? The experience of the workers in Dell is that many of them were in despair at the end of the process. Do the witnesses have any comment on that?