Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on Britain's relationship with the European Union. I find it very interesting to hear Deputies on the Government benches talk about how important it is for the 500,000 British citizens who live in the Republic to exercise their right to vote and to vote not to leave the European Union, given that over the past five years the Government resisted totally the possibility of giving votes to our emigrants so that the 600,000 Irish born people living in the UK could vote and participate in our democracy.

Deputy Corcoran Kennedy has left the Chamber. In her contribution she referred to crossing the Border in Fermanagh and seeing the British army. The reality is that Ireland and Britain were in the EU when that went on. It has no bearing whatsoever on whether the UK votes to leave the European Union. In terms of the common travel area, we had free travel before we ever joined the European Union, or the EEC as it was in 1973. There were no passport controls or travel restrictions. I understand the common travel area has been in existence since 1949. Theresa Villiers is no friend of mine, but she made the position clear at the weekend. The common travel area predates the European Union and if there is a Brexit vote it will make no difference to the current arrangement between the UK and Ireland.

There is a lot of scaremongering and false information and the tone of the discussion and debate from those opposed to Brexit is completely focused on economics and economic relationships. It is a symbol of what the society in which we live has become. We have become an economy, and the only thing in which we and our Government are interested are economics, trade and how GDP and GNP may be affected. We are more interested in that than how our citizens will be affected or anything else.

While I do not agree with the reasons why the British have decided to have a vote on membership of the European Union, I hope they vote to leave. Anything that brings forth the end of the European Union would be a good idea. If the British vote speeds that up, it would and should be welcomed. All one has to do is consider the history of the European Union over the past number of years. Recently, a treaty was signed with Turkey regarding the removal of refugees and immigrants from Greece back to Turkey. The European Union has declared Turkey to be a safe country.

It is not a very safe country for a Kurd or a Syrian refugee who flees into Turkey to get away from ISIS and the Assad regime and the slaughter they are playing out against their own citizens. Hundreds of Syrian refugees are turned back every week. In the past year, dozens of Syrian refugees have been shot dead on the border by Turkish border guards. The Turkish Government has been bombing Kurdish villages and towns inside Turkey for the past year, yet there is no mention of that anywhere.

This great, democratic, peaceful Union we talk about does a deal with Turkey to get rid of refugees and people who need our protection in order to get them back into a country that does not respect their rights, where they are not safe, and we are quite happy to go along with that. If we look at what this great Union has done in the past two years, it has carried out two coups within its own member states, where it deposed an elected government in Greece and an elected government in Italy because they did not suit the great economic agenda of the European Central Bank and the European Commission. That is the kind of Union we want everybody to stay in and be part of, without mentioning the move within the EU towards the creation of a European army and the great vision that Manuel Barroso had of the EU in 2007 when he said we now have all the trappings of empire. This is what we want to participate in and of what we are encouraging people in England to vote in favour.

I believe we should leave the English people to make their own decisions, as well as our own citizens in the Six Counties. The sky will not fall in if they vote to leave and trade deals will be done to protect our situation. We should let them make their own decisions and, hopefully, we can see the end of this Union completely.

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