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

After the euro area summit in June 2012, the Minister made lavish claims in the Dáil that this meant one of the euro financial mechanisms would be used to replace the massive €64 billion Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, followed by Fine Gael and the Labour Party, had forced Irish taxpayers to pay to bail out the European financial market system. That was two years and a number of months ago. Why did this not feature at the summit on which the Taoiseach reported to us? Where are the funds? Where is the relief that was promised? When the Taoiseach and the former Tánaiste came here to talk about seismic changes and earth-shattering events, we thought a tsunami of relief was to follow shortly. Not one cent has been seen and I ask the Taoiseach for an explanation.

Has the position and future of Hong Kong featured at EU summit level in the recent period? I am sure the Taoiseach knows that China is declaring that its Stalinist totalitarianism will be imposed on the people of Hong Kong who, in particular the youth but also wide ranges of the population, are in revolt and absolutely correct to be so. Is the Taoiseach embarrassed about this recent development, as he feted the Chinese leadership and failed to criticise the nature of the regime when it visited Ireland? There is massive repression at the diktat of the Chinese regime and we cannot rule out the possibility that a horror like what happened at Tiananmen Square could be visited on Hong Kong, either before or after the 2017 elections. Will the matter feature in upcoming meetings? Is it an issue on which the Taoiseach will engage and raise at meetings?

I refer to the horrors and atrocities visited on the people of Gaza by the overwhelming miliary power of and bombardment by the Israeli regime. How do the Taoiseach and his fellow EU leaders justify Israel being a favoured state of the European Union as far as trade issues are concerned? How does he justify the weak-kneed, cowardly, dishonest and hypocritical failure of the European Union to call what the Israeli regime is doing in Gaza by its name?

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