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

As a representative of the People Before Profit alliance and a socialist, I am a thorough internationalist, an implacable supporter of international solidarity and an implacable opponent of the racist and far-right forces that are now rising in Europe. I ask in all sincerity if we can trust Mr. Barnier with the issues of international solidarity or free movement of people as they pertain to Europe or to this country.

This week, 250 desperate refugees fleeing north Africa drowned in the Mediterranean because of the EU's fortress Europe policies. These are not free movement policies, rather they deny free movement to desperate people. Can we trust Mr. Barnier with international solidarity when Jean-Claude Trichet threatened to let off a financial bomb in Dublin if our Government even suggested burning the gambling bondholders who crippled our economy and whose activities inflicted cruel and vicious austerity on hundreds of thousands of our citizens? This has left us today with the legacy of the worst housing and homelessness crisis in the history of the State, a health service which has been savaged and incredible hardship imposed on some of our most vulnerable citizens. Even now the EU fiscal rules, of which Mr. Barnier was a significant architect, cripple our ability to deal with those problems. I do not trust the European Union to do a deal that will vindicate the needs and aspirations of the citizens of this country because it has failed to do so in recent years. Indeed, it has imposed similar hardships on countries like Greece, Spain and Italy.

If we are to give Mr. Barnier any credibility in his commitments today I would like answers to a few simple questions. Will Mr. Barnier guarantee - not consider - that Europe will not try to break up the free travel area between Ireland and the UK? Will Mr. Barnier guarantee that the European Union will not impose a hard Border between the North and South of this country? If the EU believes in democracy as it professes to do, will it give us a vote on the final deal in the negotiations between the EU and the UK in order that we can decide democratically whether we believe the best deal has been done? If Mr. Barnier cannot give those guarantees, frankly all the noble aspirations mean very little indeed. It is the failure to give guarantees and promises on democracy and rights and to vindicate genuine international solidarity that has caused the existential crisis the EU is now facing. The EU should address itself very quickly to that issue, if the dangerous forces that are rising in Europe are not to gain further advance.

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