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

Setting aside the question of the euro crisis, the meeting with British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was on the question of world hunger and on the occasion of the Olympics and Paralympics. Perhaps that should have been an opportunity to ask slightly broader and deeper questions about the priorities in the world and how well governments are dealing with the issues facing humanity. The Taoiseach would probably agree that big international events like that allow us to think about what is happening in the world and for humanity.

The import of Deputy Higgins's question is whether the Taoiseach, Prime Minister Cameron and the others attending the summit questioned why we have such an extent of hunger in the world, when the hunger is evident in a world of plenty. We do not have hunger today as we did 300 years ago because there is not enough food in the world. The irony is that millions of people are starving and go hungry when there is more food in the world than the world's population could possibly eat. Therefore, leaders like the Taoiseach, Prime Minister Cameron and other European leaders must consider the issue of the fair and civilised distribution of food, wealth and resources in our society. Our economic system is failing disastrously in that regard and moving in precisely the opposite direction. Rather than moving to greater equality and better distribution, it is moving the other way.

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