Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

He is not coming back with ideas to end austerity any time soon or for the public investment which is so desperately needed here. In any case, my question to him involves the substance of his discussions with President Obama on the proposed trade agreement between the United States of America and the European Union. Specifically, what did they discuss and into how much detail did they go? Did they merely reinforce the propaganda the Taoiseach and the President have been propagating, which is just a regurgitation of the claims made by the major multinationals which see the agreement they are trying to drive as the source of massively increased profits? They have been lobbying furiously for that type of agreement. Has the Taoiseach subjected to reality the claims being made for the agreement to the effect that there will be huge job increases? The same was said about the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, involving Canada, the USA and Mexico and jobs have been lost. Working people have been seriously discommoded by the effects of that agreement.

Is the Taoiseach aware of the details that have been leaked from the negotiations between the European Commission and the USA of what the big corporates on both sides of the Atlantic want? They want full scale liberalisation and further privatisation of public services, with concomitant downward pressure on wages and conditions for working people. Have we not learned from the savage proposals of Bausch & Lomb to drive workers in Waterford into penury and poverty to maintain profits? That, written large, is what is involved in these proposals. Is the Taoiseach aware that consumers - meaning ordinary people in Europe, including Ireland - do not want the standards being pushed by big US agri-businesses on genetically modified food, hormone-fed beef and chlorine-washed chicken to be imposed in Europe? These are all anathema to ordinary people in Europe.

Did the Taoiseach discuss with the President of the United States of America the implications of the investor-state dispute mechanism whereby business interests could override by way of the proposed agreement the ability of states to make sovereign laws? As a result of the NAFTA, Canada is being challenged by a major corporate in seeking huge damages because it placed a moratorium on fracking, which is considered to be an intrusion on the right of companies to do business as they wish.

I do not think the Taoiseach is up to speed on this. Nevertheless, I ask him if he has gone into such details with the President of the United States. Otherwise, they are reinforcing the type of propaganda that has obviously been fed to them by big business lobbyists.

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