Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Before I begin, I want also to extend my condolences and those of Sinn Féin to the victims and the bereaved of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday evening last. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families today. Ba mhaith liom mo chomhbhrón a dhéanamh leo go léir.

On Sunday, millions of Catalans voted in a referendum on independence. They did so in the face of violent repression on the part of the Spanish state. A Sinn Féin delegation of Senators, Deputies and MEPs were in Catalonia as international observers along with others. They witnessed the coercion at first hand. Old people were assaulted as they tried to enter polling stations. The Spanish police fired plastic bullets into crowds of innocent people simply because they wanted to exercise their right to vote.

We should know only too well the horrific consequences of the use of plastic bullets by the British Army in recent years in our country. I want to commend the enormous courage of the Catalan people on their efforts to hold a peaceful referendum. That was a huge achievement in and of itself, organisationally and logistically. Families occupied polling stations and kept them open so that their fellow citizens could vote. Catalan fire fighters formed human shields to protect voters and farmers brought in their tractors to form barricades so that citizens could vote. These were not violent actions and they should not have been met with the violent response they received from the Spanish state. As the Taoiseach knows well, the Speaker of the Catalan Parliament has been prosecuted for holding a debate and a vote in the Parliament on the issue of an independence referendum. The former president and two former ministers have also been prosecuted for organising a non-binding referendum on independence in 2014.

Fine Gael has a close connection with the government party in Spain and it is time for the Taoiseach to encourage dialogue. The international community, especially the European Union, has an obligation to ensure that Catalonia can pursue its course of self determination without fear of suppression. Our Government should be to the forefront in defending their right to decide their own future. What they decide is a secondary issue and is entirely a matter for themselves. The refusal to make this case is justified on the basis that these issues are an internal matter for the Spanish state but that is exactly the pretext that was used by the British state for decades to prevent the scrutiny of British rule in the North. It was only when these issues became internationalised that remedies emerged.

Will the Taoiseach stand up for the principles of democracy and the right to self determination for the people of Catalonia and will he use his influence and connections with the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr. Mariano Rajoy, to get him to accept mediation as part of the necessary process of talks between his Government and the Catalan people?

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