Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will not try to engage in poetry in my contribution. I want to begin by saying there was a deep sense of shock across the House when the executive orders were signed by President Trump. It would have been better had there been a common voice rather than individual statements on that. Obviously, we do not have a consensus view on every issue but on the issue of this executive order and its impact on a group of seven countries and their citizens, we have a common voice. It would have been preferable had it been possible to craft a motion that we could all formally adopt and submit to the US authorities but we have statements and we will have to deal with it on that basis.

The election of Donald Trump caused dismay - that is not too strong a word - or certainly deep concern among many people in Europe and certainly for anybody involved in public affairs in Europe. Some welcomed it but from listening to the Irish people the vast majority of them shared those real concerns. Having watched since his inauguration, with growing and deepening concern, his hateful rhetoric being transposed into executive action, all of us have to reflect on all these matters in a new way. It is not business as usual. Most of us got involved in politics because, on a basic level, we wanted to do our bit to make our own communities and country a better place. We come at it from different perspectives. We all came into public life to improve the lives of our people. In doing so, we try to set high standards for ourselves and to hold ourselves to them, to imagine a better society and to persuade people that those imaginings can take concrete form. There is not a politician who has not failed in that endeavour in some way. We are human, we make mistakes, we err, but time and again we try to do better and sometimes we succeed, and that renews people's faith in democracy. What is unique and different in my view about President Donald Trump is that he never once sought to be the best possible version of himself. During the course of the year and a half that he was campaigning he sought at every opportunity to stoke up fear and insecurity in the American people and to ruthlessly target the most vulnerable, and this from the United States that gave the world the idea of a Bill of Rights and proudly presents itself as "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

As a democrat, I must and do accept the democratic decision of the American people. They voted for a man whom they believe will change things and they voted in a way that says they are unhappy with the status quoin America. Across the western world, all of us involved in politics have to reflect on that message. As we learn more and more of the contacts between Donald Trump and President Putin of Russia, who was one of the first to congratulate President-elect Trump and made no secret of the fact that he wished President Trump to succeed in the election, and as we see people like Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen queuing up for photo opportunities with the new president, I believe we have real cause for concern. We commemorated a century of our proud history last year but today we have to wonder how much of our history we in the western world have managed to forget. Far right forces, building on support from disaffected and vulnerable working class communities, are once more growing and targeting bile at vulnerable minorities. How quickly we forget. Those of us who reject such an approach to politics must turn to the task of restoring faith in the democratic process among people who feel they have been alienated and forgotten.

I have spoken previously about the traditional St. Patrick's Day visit of the Taoiseach to Washington. Ireland has long-held deep relations with the United States of America, some of which the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, referenced in his contribution. As Deputy Darragh O'Brien said, we have very deep business interests, with Irish companies employing Americans in almost as great a number as American companies employing Irish people here. We depend on each other for investment. We have deep tourist links. Across most of the island of Ireland American tourists are an important part of our economic well-being. We have deep cultural links with not only a common language but the same taste in music, history and so on, and up to now we shared values. This is the nub of it. I believe that the values we share are shared with the American people but they are not Donald Trump's values. For decades we have been able to enjoy significant access to senior US politicians in or around St. Patrick's Day. This has allowed us to raise issues that matter to this country on all the topics I mentioned, issues that matter to the Irish people. That access, as Deputy Flanagan and Deputy O'Brien have said, is extremely valuable. I know from talking to others that other countries are very jealous of it, but it is not the only thing of value.

Ireland is an open and tolerant nation. We believe that those who are experiencing violence and oppression in their home nations should be welcomed to nations that can provide them with safety, security and a future. President Trump does not share those values. Indeed, he is openly hostile to them. He and his team have made clear that they are unwilling to hear any discordant voices. In fact, they are unwilling to even listen. I believe and I have said it publicly, and I did not say it to have a soundbite and I resent it being characterised in that way because this is a major issue, that it is not business as usual. Our Taoiseach should not present himself in the Oval Office or in the West Wing of the White House to be humiliated, and that is what it would be in the same way as, I believe, Theresa May was, with President Trump holding her hand as a formal endorsement of his policies.

I strongly support the visit in recent weeks of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Charlie Flanagan, to the United States. I said this publicly. The Minister engaged with senior Administration officials and senior elected politicians while doing Ireland's business. That engagement, arguing for what is important to us, is really important and significant but it is different from the shamrockery and glad-handing that surround St. Patrick's Day. I was privileged to spend ten years as a member of Cabinet, during which time I travelled on St. Patrick's Day missions all over the world. It is true that I did not always travel to the most savoury of places but the United States is quite different. We can give a different message to the United States.

It was suggested this morning in this Chamber by Deputy Darragh O'Brien that I would take a different view in government. Those who suggest the Labour Party would take different stand seem to have forgotten that when it was in government, the then Minister, Deputy Joan Burton, refused to attend the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York while LGBT organisations were banned from it. Former Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, refused to attend the St. Patrick's Day dinner in Savannah, Georgia, because women were banned from that event. Those events obviously do not have the same standing as the formal shamrock event in the White House but the values that informed the decisions on those events have informed our analysis of this matter also. Deputy Darragh O'Brien should note that Fianna Fáil was very critical of both Deputy Joan Burton and Mr. Eamon Gilmore for those decisions.

Sometimes the right choice is to travel to a country and openly criticise the actions taken by a government that fly in the face of our values. That is a legitimate presentation that was made this morning. It was done when Deputy Jan O'Sullivan travelled to Malawi for St. Patrick's Day, for example. She used that opportunity to be outspoken in her criticism of the homophobic policies that were being pursued in the country at that time. That had an impact because some change followed in 2012.

I have sympathy for and an understanding of the Taoiseach's difficulty in grappling with this question. These are tough calls. Ultimately, however, the decision must be based on which action best represents the values of the Irish people, whom the Taoiseach is supposed to represent on these trips. It is not simply a political trip but a representative trip on behalf of the Irish people. Therefore, I have an understanding of and sympathy for the Taoiseach in making the choice but I do not believe he is making the right choice.

As I stated, I do not think anybody believes that when the Taoiseach travels to the White House and openly makes comments that clearly set out Ireland's position on the policies being implemented by Mr. Donald Trump, anybody will listen. Why does anybody in this House imagine that the Taoiseach will fare better than the Australian Prime Minister a short few weeks ago, on whom the telephone was simply hung up, or the Mexican President?

The recent US executive order is dangerous, wrong and racist. It will increase radicalism and not diminish it in anyway. We must reject those policies and the values that underpin them. I believe that is what Irish people want. It has been said that the issue of the undocumented Irish is so important because they might be affected by any refusal to go through with the normal St. Patrick's Day event. One can celebrate St. Patrick's Day in the United States without doing that formal work. It is an extraordinary presentation of the facts, however, if one regards the undocumented Irish as some sorts of hostages whose plight requires us to kowtow to an Administration for fear their circumstances would somehow be worsened if we did not pay proper obeisance to President Trump. That is a poor analysis of the circumstances and one that does not do justice to the very strongly held views of the Irish people.

These are very difficult times. The Trump Administration is new and unprecedented. Every day when we get up, today no less than any other, a new part of our reality is to check the latest announcement, pronouncement or executive action of the Trump Administration. These are days, issues and phenomena that require us to break the notion of business as normal, or the view that because we have always done something, we must always do it. I believe strongly that the values that are important to us and under assault not only in the United States but also elsewhere, including across Europe, deserve to be defended by us.

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