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

If ever there was a time for those who have any conscience or any care for human beings to receive a wake-up call, now is that time. The actions of the big powers - the Western powers and Russia - have led to the disintegration of the societies of the vast majority of the war-torn countries from which 12 million people have been displaced and the subsequent unleashing of the worst refugee crisis we have seen since the Second World War. Is it not time for people to speak the truth about why this is happening and to respond with compassion and humanity?

The European Union, which is making noises about being humane and compassionate, is playing a double game. Over 12 million people have been displaced, but we are talking about only taking in 160,000. There are 2 million refugees in Turkey alone, with millions more in Lebanon and Jordan; that is okay for them, but we can only take 160,000. It is pathetic. At the same time, we talk about strengthening border controls and making it more difficult for people to get into the EU. That hypocrisy has to stop, as does the hypocrisy of refusing to speak out about what the big powers are doing in fuelling this situation in the first place. If we are serious, we must do something about the arms industry. Given that no-one else is doing it, will the Government ask why Britain and the United States are financing Saudi Arabia? Why are we not imposing punitive taxes and stopping the arms trade, which is fuelling this situation? Somebody has to say this.

I will move on briefly to the issue of Palestine, a long-term example of exactly the same issue. Israel is a state that is involved in illegal occupation and in horrific, ongoing, systematic, deliberate and unashamed attacks on peoples' human and civil rights, but we are still doing business with it. We allow it to have an embassy here. We go to conferences and summits and do not say, "This is unacceptable." When will some sort of moral conscience inform the foreign policy of this and other countries? When are we going to say that this has to stop? When are we going to stop pretending these guys are normal when in fact they are warmongers, tyrants and despots who are slaughtering people? They should not be part of the international community of nations until they stop this kind of behaviour. It is long past time these things were said, and it would be nice if this country, with its history, began to say them.

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