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

Again, it is left to us on these benches to bring an explicitly left and working class perspective to the debate on the EU and Britain’s exit. One unfortunate aspect of the referendum campaign in Britain is that the justified working class anger at the EU on the sound grounds of its neo-liberal and anti-worker agenda did not find expression in the national debate in the UK. Jeremy Corbyn, whose election to the leadership of the British Labour Party we welcomed and who we still wish well in the struggle against the Blairite wing of that party, made a bad mistake when he put aside his well documented reservations about the EU for the sake of inner party peace, thereby ceding the ground in the national debate to the right-wing, isolationist and xenophobic exit campaign instead of staking out the left progressive case for exit. As a result, a rounded out understanding of the motivations behind the vote, particularly in working class areas of Britain, has been consciously obscured. We should not forget that here too in recent EU referenda both large sections of the urban working class and the rural poor voted "No" to recent treaties. The role of the EU as a driver of austerity here, in Greece and elsewhere, as well as high profile anti-worker judgments by the European Court of Justice, have fed this justified opposition.

In the North, fear of the consequences of a bargain-basement Brexit is being used by the sectarian parties to stir up discontent and create greater sectarian division among the working class. Although a majority in the North voted to remain in the EU, it must be noted and recognised that a majority of Catholics voted to remain and that a majority of Protestants voted to leave. The UK leaving the EU has raised fears among Northern Irish Catholics that a hard border will be an impediment to them achieving their desire for a united Ireland.

Those living in Border communities are rightly concerned that a hard border will impede their travel back and forth to work, school and to visit family. They are fearful that tariffs and custom posts will lead to job losses. The UK leaving the EU raises the potential for Scottish independence and the break up of the UK, which has resulted in greater anxiety among Northern Irish Protestants about their future. The vast majority of working class people in the North do not countenance going back to the conflicts of the past. However, the reintroduction of custom posts and border checks would be a potential target for attack by dissident republicans leading to further instability and the possibility of a return to conflict between loyalist and republican paramilitaries.

No one on this island, North or South, supports a hard border. The political establishment has it within its power to stop a hard border.

It is time for the Taoiseach and this Government to stand up to the EU. The post-UK exit trade deal must be agreed by all 27 EU member states and their parliaments. The Taoiseach should send a warning to the European Commission and Theresa May that this Parliament will veto any trade deal which contains tariffs on trade between North and South. He should tell the Commission that we will not accept a hard Border and put an end to the uncertainty which is causing widespread anxiety and which is increasing instability in Northern Ireland. The exit of Britain from the EU and resulting trade-based conflict do pose concrete dangers to jobs in this State and the cost of living in certain areas, like energy imports. The debate that will therefore confront us as to whether the Government will adopt an interventionist approach to save jobs and industries that will be hit, such as agri-foods, and if so what type of intervention. We say that it is correct that the State underpin jobs but not via a mechanism of corporate welfare that will typically benefit the biggest companies, but rather through State enterprise initiatives and anti-poverty measures that will raise domestic demand for the products of industry. Instead of this the greater part of the Government's focus seems to be the luring of financial companies from London to Dublin notwithstanding the fact that the impact, jobs-wise, in Ireland has already been demonstrated as negligible, not to mention the fact that their activities are far less socially useful than the other areas of the economy that are most under threat.

These are precisely the values that will not be championed by the EU leaders or this Government but they are the values that are instinctually supported by many millions of working class people across Europe, Britain and here.

See this speech in context