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

I move amendment No. 2:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:“notes that:

-- the British Conservative Party are attempting to use the split with the European Union (EU) as the pretext for a greater ‘liberalisation’ of trade, the creation of lower corporation tax and a bargain basement economy for working people;

-- the EU bureaucracy will seek to inflict economic penalties on Britain and by extension Northern Ireland, to put other countries off leaving the EU;

-- both the British Government and the EU bureaucracy are wedded to a neoliberal model of economics, that is contrary to the interests of working people on both sides of the border;

-- the EU/ECB/IMF ‘Troika’ austerity programme inflicted on working people in Ireland had devastating effects, this programme was replicated with a similar austerity programme in the Stormont House Agreement which proposed to cut 20,000 jobs from the public sector, privatise state assets and cut social spending; and

-- the commitment of Northern Ireland political parties, both those on the leave and remain sides of the Brexit debate, to reduce the corporate tax rate;

concludes that:

-- any attempt to impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland will not be accepted, and declares that it will defy either the EU or Britain if either party attempts to impose such a border, and further declares that it will encourage mobilisation of ‘people power’ to remove any such border posts; and

-- the current model of developing both Irish economies on the basis of ‘tax competitiveness’ for big corporations will no longer work due to both Brexit and the declared policies of President Trump’s administration; and

calls on:

-- any incoming Northern Ireland Executive to refuse to lower corporation tax and for an open debate to begin on an alternative economic model that will create a green economy funded by greater public investment;

-- the people of Northern Ireland to withdraw allegiance from both the Brussels bureaucracy and the British state, whose interests lie in putting profits before the needs of the majority of people; and

-- working people to resist any cutbacks in living standards that are introduced under the pretext of Brexit and to forge a new unity on this island on the basis of common class interests as the great Irish socialist James Connolly advised.”

See this speech in context