Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am speaking as a member of People Before Profit and solely on behalf of People Before Profit. Apart from Sinn Féin, we are the only other party that has elected Members both North and South of the Border. We are a party that wants and seeks a united Ireland, not an Ireland as envisaged by some here of unity based on low corporation tax, which is a safe tax haven for the elite of the world and which denies women, North and South, bodily autonomy. We want a truly equal Ireland.

I will not be joining the chorus of demands for a deal for the sake of a deal between the parties in the North to get Stormont back up and running. A deal for the sake of a deal represents a demand for the resumption of a Government that was mired in corruption with the cash-for-ash scandal and which was determined not to allow women have the right to choose. The largest party within it, the DUP, has utterly reactionary politics, contempt for the campaign for LGBT rights, a vitriolic hatred of the idea of a woman’s right to choose and opposition to and contempt for marriage equality. This is not just about its attitude to social issues. It is not just right-wing on economic questions. Beneath the façade of supporting Protestant workers' interests, the real agenda of the DUP is to support the elite, which we saw in the NAMA and Project Eagle and cash-for-ash scandals. Internationally, we saw it with the selling of the North as a tax haven and a low corporate tax jurisdiction with few workers' rights and low wages and conditions. The DUP offers ordinary Protestants in the North absolutely nothing. It has supported a wage freeze in the public sector and has helped the Tories to hound people off social welfare benefits.

We agree we want to see an Ireland, North and South, based on equality but we go further than Sinn Féin on this. Our vision of equality in the North will include the rights of Irish language speakers and the recognition that this right means the right to funding and educational opportunities to speak and learn the language. The silence here from the main parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the reactionary attitude of the DUP speaks volumes about their phoney republicanism and phoney commitment to equality of both sides of the island.

Our vision goes much further. It extends to wanting equality for women, North and South, who have to travel to England to avail of abortion. It extends to wanting to see the ending of the criminalisation of those woman, North and South. In the South, women face a 14-year sentence and in the North, they face a sentence of life imprisonment.

Those who claim to be committed to equality and yet want an administration that supports the status quoon women's rights and on LGBT rights are showing contempt for the suffering and the hurt that these Victorian laws and attitudes do to real men and women.

We believe winning the equality agenda also means winning economic equality. That is why, for example, we were disappointed that the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis recently rejected a motion from the Clonard cumann in west Belfast calling for corporation tax not to be reduced in the North, as Sinn Féin and the DUP plan on doing. We cannot build an Ireland of equals by giving the corporations handouts. We cannot build an Ireland of equals by supporting access to abortion in the South, as we did today - albeit limited in the case of Sinn Féin - and ignoring that right for women in the North.

On Brexit, again we see double standards and the phoney concerns of many parties here. Let us be clear: the Brexit negotiations have been a competition between two rotten blocs. On the one hand are the Tories, who clearly do not have a clue about this country and faced with the reality of the hard border, they know it will not be accepted here. Nor will the vision of a Tory Brexit that attacks EU migrants be accepted. On the other hand, we have used the Brexit negotiations to sleepwalk this country into supporting PESCO, which will end Irish neutrality and incorporate us into an EU imperial army. What is the use of calling for an end to the British Empire where the sun never set and the blood never dried only to dissolve our sovereignty into an empire of the European Union? It should be clear to anyone who is paying attention that neither the Tories nor the EU have any interest in protecting the people of this island.

We oppose a hard border, not because it is an inconvenience to trade but because a hard border will strengthen partition. We oppose partition because, as James Connolly said, that partition will lead to a carnival of reaction North and South. That is what the Magdalen laundries represented, what the Tuam babies represented and what the opposition to gay rights and women's rights in the North currently represents.

We intend to put our money where our mouth is and oppose a hard border in deeds not just words. We will campaign to make sure this State does not co-operate with any form of a hard border, from customs officers to police and to any form of state support for a physical border. We will mobilise to ensure any physical presence is removed.

We will also ensure the Government follows up on its own rhetoric. The Government needs to use Ireland's veto in Europe to stop any deal that would result in a hard border. We will insist that any deal should be put to a vote North and South. In opposing this, we will not side with the bureaucrats in Brussels who do not give a damn about us. They forced austerity on us. We should remember the economic bullies who imposed the biggest bank bailout in the history of the world on the people of this country. We will not be part of their EU army. We want a social Europe, a democratic Europe, a people's Europe and not the Europe beloved by some commentators that is about the needs of big business, that locks out refugees who drown in the Mediterranean fleeing persecution and war and are currently trapped in torture camps and slave camps in Libya.

We have a Europe that wants to move us into a military union as well as a market union. That is what PESCO is about. That is why the Government is happy to raise defence spending to more than €3.5 billion, while refusing to commit anything near that in increasing spending in any other sphere that might benefit ordinary people.

The only consistent position for progressives in this country is the position of People Before Profit. We serve neither London nor Brussels but fight for real democracy and a decent future for all on this island based on the needs of workers and ordinary people across Europe and not the needs of big corporations, which are bleeding dry the people not just of this island but across Europe.

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