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

Last week during Leaders' Questions and on other occasions in this House, I vociferously protested the Government's cynical decision to sign us up to the PESCO European defence pact and the manner in which the Government did so, namely, by withholding that it planned to do this from the Business Committee for several weeks. It was a calculated effort to prevent public debate on the matter. There are many reasons to oppose our involvement in EU militarisation but I will raise one of them today.

In the past week, Amnesty International has condemned the complicity of European governments in what it describes as the horrific abuse of refugees and migrants and how the EU naval operation in the Mediterranean is colluding with the ministry of the interior, the Libyan coastguard, and the Libyan directorate for combatting illegal migration in "torture and abuse of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants detained by [the] Libyan immigration authorities in appalling conditions in Libya." It goes on to say that European governments are "actively supporting a sophisticated system of abuse and exploitation of refugees and migrants by the Libyan Coast Guard, detention authorities and smugglers in order to prevent people from crossing the Mediterranean". It refers to overcrowded detention centres where refugees and migrants are subject to systematic abuse. It contends, and I agree, that European governments have not only been aware of these abuses but in actively supporting the Libyan authorities in stopping sea crossings and containing people in Libya, they are complicit in these abuses.

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