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

In the song "Imagine", John Lennon asked us to imagine if there were no countries and a brotherhood of man. That is the view held by socialists. We do not believe in national borders or frontiers. We believe there is one race, the human race. Frankly, I find it frustrating, to put it mildly, that a previous speaker suggested that those of us who are critical of the European Union and believe that we should exit it can somehow be associated with the vile xenophobia, racism and extreme forms of nationalism promoted by the fascist far right in Europe or the vile group UKIP, which happens to lead the campaign against the European Union and for exit, but on grounds with which we would have nothing to do.

We have nothing but contempt for UKIP and the far right. It is most disingenuous for some to suggest that in supporting the existing European Union and arguing for staying in it somehow what we are doing is protecting some beacon of civilised values and tolerance, decency and anti-racism when the opposite is the truth.

The European Union, as Deputy Paul Murphy has alluded to, is guilty of vile policies of racism against some of the most desperate people fleeing from countries outside Europe from war, poverty and famine and has developed an enormous machine to keep people out, to deny the brotherhood of man, to say Europe is only free if a person is white and European but if that person is not, we do not want him or her. The European Union has developed a significant machine and architecture to keep people from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere out. Between 2002 and 2013, a total of 39 research and development programmes aimed at policing borders have been implemented by the EU and its affiliate, the European Space Agency, at a cost of €250 million. The projects have been for the development of fingerprint scanners, migrant detection drones, vehicles, satellite surveillance and overground and underwater border patrols, all designed to keep people out. FRONTEX, the EU-wide project for establishing the external borders of the European Union, has spent €1 billion, four times the other amount to which I referred, keeping immigrants out, supported by all the European Governments and European policy. That figure is further dwarfed by the amount individual states have spent policing their own borders as part of fortress Europe.

It is Europe itself that has given credence and opened up the ground for the far right by treating migrants, immigrants and refugees as if they are a problem, encouraging and giving solace to the more dangerous forces of the far right who then take it one step further. The EU-Turkey agreement is the absolute embodiment of that. It is a sickening agreement whereby we essentially outsource the border control of Europe to a nasty regime that is guilty of systematic, ongoing human rights abuses against its own population. Since we signed the agreement whereby we expel immigrants from Syria and elsewhere back to Turkey, Turkey has started shooting those very people. How could we be in any way surprised that it would do so? We must end the hypocrisy and the tyranny of fortress Europe and give real meaning to words such as “tolerance” and “internationalism” to which many look to the European Union to uphold but which the European Union has not matched with deeds but with the vile policies of fortress Europe.

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