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

It showed a dishonesty of analysis and a lack of any sense of humility about the failures of the political establishments in this country and Europe and their responsibility for giving rise to these vile political forces. We on the left are the ones who criticise Europe time and again, not because it is too generous to immigrants, but because it allowed 7,000 immigrants to die in the Mediterranean through a Fortress Europe policy and because of the despicable policy, which Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have their fingerprints on, of imprisoning 4,000 people, including 1,500 children, in the abomination that is direct provision. Despite setting up and maintaining that system, which degrades young people, those parties say nothing about it. They fail to criticise Europe's racist Fortress Europe policy or its despicable deal with Turkey that forces desperate Syrian refugees back into the hands of the rotten Turkish regime, which has a despicable human rights record. Similar deals are being done with Libya and Afghanistan. In the case of the latter, Afghan asylum seekers will be deported from the EU back to Afghanistan en masse.

We are the ones who speak up for the refugees. We are the ones who speak up for Ibrahim Halawa, who is rotting in an Egyptian prison and whose sisters ask why the political establishment does not do more? I will tell the House what I honestly believe - the beef deals are more important than the need to take a hard approach with the Egyptian regime.

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