Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

They are great people in Great Britain. They are our family and our friends. We have worked there. Okay, we fought for 800 years but we have got over that. Now we get on very well with the people in Great Britain. I remember working there when there were bombs going off in our midst. They still got on with us. We were still tolerant to one another. I think we have to respect the vote of the British people, particularly the English people, because we believe in democracy. We know from our use of referendums in this country that the last thing we want is for people from outside to question the results of our polls. I am sure many people in Britain had very good reasons for voting the way they did. I am sure many of them did so because they had nothing to lose. In the backlash or backwash from one of Margaret Thatcher's legacies - her comment that "there is no such thing as society" - perhaps they thought there was no reason not to leave. Maybe others had an understandable fear about what migration might bring, given that 60 million people are crammed into a relatively small area on a small island, and voted to leave the European Union on the basis that it would solve their problems.

I want to use this occasion to express what I can only describe as my personal grief, shock and disbelief at what they have just done. What were they thinking when they ignored the voices of their young people, the vast majority of whom made their views clear on the day by voting to stay in the EU? What was the generation of baby boomers doing? As they headed off to the south of France or the south of Spain on their retirement savings, they pulled up the drawbridge so that the generation which is just about to start would not have a chance. The younger generation will be cut off and disadvantaged as a result of how the older generation has voted. What were they thinking when they allowed themselves to be led by such clowns as Johnson, Gove and Farage? It has been clear every day since the referendum result that they did not have the first faintest idea of what they would do if they won. What were they thinking when they bought the bilious, bitter and bigoted lines of jingoistic newspapers like The Sun, the Daily Expressand the Daily Mail? The proprietors of such newspapers sought to gain by building on the lack of society they helped to create when they supported the British Government - it seemed to me that they ran it, in effect - for the last 30 or 40 years with their frequent visits to 10 Downing Street. What were they thinking when they ignored the shouts from the graves in the Somme, Verdun and the Dardanelles? Perhaps they forgot the following lines:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They forgot the lessons of the First World War, the Second World War and the many other wars on our European Continent down through the years. How can they have forgotten those lessons as they voted last Friday? How can they have given up on what we need to do to foster more international co-operation? When I read the English newspapers with interest to try to get the line from those who voted "Leave", the best I could discern was some kind of notion - it is not a notion; it is their right to hold it - that there needed to be a glorious new revolution that involved returning to their own parliament, having great freedom and choice and being able to show great skill. They did not seem to realise that the glorious revolution that needs to take place today, if we are to deal with issues like climate change and migration and if we are to manage the forces of globalisation, which were behind the fear that led people to vote "Leave" in the first place, must involve nation-states working together, not just within our Union but across the whole wider world.

What can we possibly do now? First of all, I say that we stand by the European Union. I have listened to people here giving out about the Union and various aspects of it. In my experience, most of the failings of the Union arose when we gave up on the Community method. Failings were exposed in how we dealt with the financial crash when we retreated back to nation-states just looking after their own interests, rather than looking at the bigger picture. The failings in the migration crisis have arisen when we have not done things in a co-ordinated or organised way. We stand by the Union. As we said to our Scottish Green Party colleagues over the last few years, we stand by the Scottish people should they seek to achieve independence. Perhaps they will now look to independence once more as a lifeboat to maintain their position within the EU. As other speakers have said here today, of course we would welcome them aboard. We should also stand by the UK in the negotiations that have to take place because we have a special interest and a special relationship that we want to keep. We should not stand with them in a way that merely involves buying into the form of economic thinking that believes free trade is the only thing that matters. Some people believe the adoption of such a system would be a good outcome from this process. It has been suggested that if the UK were to get a lower corporation tax rate, that would undermine what they consider to be our chief interest in the EU, which is having a low corporation tax rate. I do not believe that is true and I do not believe such a strategy is a clever one. We should look for them to build up trade and to keep their borders open, particularly on this island. We should negotiate and give them time. We should try to give them a chance to manage this in a way that minimises the damage that will be done. It was interesting to hear the Taoiseach emphasise that the European Council will be in control of this process. The European Parliament will also have a role. The EU is not without its democratic systems and structures. As we said to the Taoiseach at last Friday's meeting, we will work with our Green colleagues across Europe to try to make sure there is a common position in the European Parliament on how we should deal with this. I think that is important.

I read some Irish commentators over the weekend who think this is great because it means we must have an election here, which in turn will somehow improve our position as we negotiate this most uncertain time. I do not agree with that. I think the results from Spain overnight show that if we were to have an election, we would probably get a similar result, followed by another period of several months of instability. That is not what we need. We need to show political strength by working together collectively. We need to work with our near neighbours and our far neighbours in the EU to try to minimise the damage that has been done by this single act. Last but not least, we need to send a message to the British people that although we respect the decision they made when they voted three or four days ago, we will welcome them back if they ever change their minds. We have done that in the past. It was neither easy nor right to vote twice on the Nice and Lisbon treaties, but do we regret it? Do we regret our position within the Union? One hundred years on from the foundation of our own State, what would our advice to Scotland be? I think we would advise the Scottish people that they cannot stand on their own two feet, but they can stand within a European Union and strengthen their own country by working in co-operation with other countries. I long for the day when the UK as a whole realises that and votes itself back into our Union, thereby helping to make it stronger and to address the critical challenges we all face today.

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