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

The fairly desperate scramble of the political establishment in this country and elsewhere to understand why it is so discredited often focuses on trivia and superficial impressions about what is important and what motivates the electorate. Never more did we see this on show than during the visit of Prime Minister Trudeau, when the focus of much of the commentary was about socks, image and jogging through the park. There was no serious debate about the substantial issues for which the Taoiseach and Prime Minister Trudeau affirmed their support, which are the actual reasons the political establishment is in trouble, namely, the consequence of 25 years of corporate-led globalisation, of which CETA is the latest version. I say seriously to the Taoiseach that he should recognise, even for his own narrow political concerns or, for that matter, those of Deputy Martin, that the reason the establishment is in trouble is the consequence of corporate-led globalisation on ordinary working people and their incomes, public services, infrastructure and the growing inequality in the distribution of wealth, which CETA will further exacerbate. The Taoiseach keeps saying he favours trade. So do I. I favour trade in a way that will benefit the majority of people. All the lauding of CETA, which the Taoiseach has reaffirmed, fails to acknowledge, first, that he plans to apply it without any democratic mandate in this country, as in many other places, which infuriates people, and, second, that he fails to acknowledge the damage it will do to workers' rights, environmental standards, the distribution of wealth, health and safety standards or, according to a recent academic study, the estimated 300,000 jobs that will be lost in Europe as a result of the agreement. None of these things is mentioned.

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