Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

What we have here is a massive transfer of powers and an erosion of democratic rights. This charade in the Chamber today is nothing more than a sop and a pretence that our Parliament is discussing the matter. I find it quite insulting.

As George Monbiot has put it, where once trade agreements promoted free trade by removing trade tariffs, "now they promote the interests of transnational capital by downgrading the defence of human health, the natural world, labour rights and the poor and vulnerable from predatory corporate practices." This is the neoliberal project unleashed, the endgame of that project, whereby there has been a chipping away at many of the rights that people came to expect. The damage is found in polluted rivers and seas; overheating economies; temporary, low-paid jobs; air pollution; and the transfer of wealth from the majority into the hands of a very small and shrinking minority. With this deal on the table, the social democratic facade of the EU is being finally dismantled.

The Government and other international leaders have said to those of us who have raised objections not to be worrying about it, and have told us it is not going to be as bad as we all think. However, with other agreements like the trans-Pacific partnership, TPP, and so on, we heard exactly the same thing and, once the details were published, they were actually worse than what people had thought. We have been given a variety of assurances about investor-state dispute settlement, renamed the investment court system, which renaming is just cosmetics really. We have been given assurances about public services, genetically modified organisms, GMOs, and food standards but it is very difficult to take those assurances at face value given what has happened with TPP and other agreements.

A fundamental problem here is that there are a lot of reassurances that turn out to be utterly worthless. For example, last May, talking about the TPP, Barack Obama said:

critics warn that parts of this deal would undermine American regulation - food safety, worker safety, even financial regulations. They're making this stuff up. This is just not true. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws.

He was of course utterly wrong; when the text of the TPP was published it emerged that many of the commitments they were talking about had been stood on their heads.

The Minister told the Oireachtas jobs committee back in May that everything was going to be grand, we should not be worried and that the negotiations were utterly transparent. That is not true; they have not been transparent. While we have had sight of the Commission's position papers and negotiating texts, we have not seen the US side. We certainly have not had full and free public access to the draft of the agreement. MEPs are able to get access to a draft text only in confidential reading rooms where the texts are stored, and even if they do go to the bother of looking at them they cannot tell the public what they have actually seen or take notes beyond what they can scribble down with a pen and paper when they go in. Is that transparency and accountability? If everything is so great with the deal, why is it shrouded in secrecy? The only conclusion one can reach is that everything is not so great with it. We can base that on what has happened in other trade agreements.

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