Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will speak for Solidarity and for the Socialist Party which organises North and South on this island and has sister socialist organisations across the world, including in Britain. I want to bring a distinctly left, progressive and explicitly pro-working class and pro-migrant perspective to this debate on Brexit. In practice, that means recognising all the key negotiating stakeholders in the Brexit process - the Tories, the devolved governments in the UK, the EU leaders and the Government in this country - are first and foremost concerned with serving the interest of big business within their own borders and furthering an international race to the bottom. To quote Jeremy Corbyn, the Tories and the employers in the UK are looking to create a "bargain basement" Britain. The competitive edge they seek following the repeal Bill due to be passed in Westminster will lay the legal ground for undoing whatever EU directives they want. For them, it is an opportunity to push back the minimum provisions which cover standards of workers' rights. Specifically the organisation of working time Acts, the transfer of undertakings laws, and health and safety in the workplace related directives are in their sights. There is an onus on the left and the trade union movement in Britain and Northern Ireland to proactively fight to retain and improve workers' rights and conditions. My comrades there will not be found wanting in that regard. The left and the trade union movement in Britain and Northern Ireland need to go further than adopting a purely defensive position. The so-called repatriation - in reality, transference - of every negative European Court of Justice ruling, from the point of view of workers' rights and EU state aid rules, and every other neoliberal measure which will no longer have the status and weight of European law behind them represents an opportunity to advance a positive programme of enhancing workers' rights as well as public investments in jobs and services.

In this State, we take the consistent position of supporting the free movement of people and opposing racist border controls in the EU. That applies to the North-South Border as much as it does to the Mediterranean.

Establishment politicians and employer organisations in this State are not ones to waste a good crisis. They are disturbed by Brexit, but not too disturbed by what it means for workers' rights and migrants in the UK other than how it represents a furthering of the race to the bottom. The natural reflex of the Government and IBEC is to go even further and cite developments in the UK as grounds for withholding wages in the public and private sectors and lowering the corporation tax rate, with everything that goes with that in terms of the heavy price our public services pay.

In the negotiations on the terms of Brexit, we are already witnessing the nauseating sight of the rights and livelihoods of people being used as bargaining chips. We stand for the protection of the rights of EU citizens living in Britain and Northern Ireland. Their right to remain, work, vote and access public services must be supported. Conversely, we will stand against any vindictive approach taken by the EU against citizens from Britain and the North living in the EU. My colleague, Deputy Coppinger's Bill to extend the franchise will safeguard the voting rights of people from Britain and the North who are living in Ireland.

I note the failure of Geert Wilders's Party for Freedom to make a breakthrough in last week's Dutch elections. His is a far right, populist party that is racist to the core. It had 20 seats in the previous Parliament. Despite predictions that it could double that number to 40 and kickstart a swing to the extreme right in the Netherlands, France and Germany, it stayed stuck on 20 seats after last week's elections. Many ordinary working people in the Netherlands voted for other options - Christian democrats, the non-government liberals, the GreenLeft and so on - but that was no thanks to the Dutch Labour Party, which left a large space open, one that Geert Wilders was fortunately unable to exploit, by selling out on workers' aspirations in a coalition government of harsh austerity. That party dropped from 38 seats to nine, a defeat on a par with the Irish Labour Party in February 2016.

To defeat the far right decisively, we need a genuine, mass, left force to rally discontent and channel it in a positive direction against the establishment and capitalism, not just in the Netherlands, but in France, Germany, Ireland and other European countries.

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