Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The weird fallacy is that the Brexiteers are looking after the working class; they are the economic nationalists and they will make Britain great again by going into the form of globalised trading that has caused the problem. There is a subterfuge happening in those arguments both in Britain and America. The Minister of State, Deputy McEntee, and the Tánaiste and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, have been very useful in these Brexit events. I am not sure whose analysis it was - it may have been that of Patricia King - but there is a view that the problem we are seeing in the emerging Brexit deal, including in the draft withdrawal agreement, is that it is weakest in protecting workers' rights and environmental rights. I do not know if the Minister of State would agree but that seems to be one of the problems that has been identified.

I fear the British will not agree to any deal and will crash out of the EU as a result. Even if they get their extended "pretended" arrangement, which seems now to be their latest withdrawal from their red-line positions, they still have to get over the hurdle of agreeing governance mechanisms in any withdrawal agreement. The European Court of Justice clearly must have a central position in any such agreement. I fear that Mr. Johnson and his 30 or 50 hard Brexiteer colleagues in the Tory Party will not accept that and Britain will crash out rather than swallow the final bitter pill of what, for them, will be a very weak Brexit withdrawal agreement.

We have to place ourselves in that context. To a certain extent, whatever we stand up for in the context of any arrangement should not just relate to the nature of any deal relating to our Border. We have to stand up to the ultimate fallacy that the response to the inequities and unfairness to which globalisation gives rise lies in a retreat to a nationalism. What we must do is change the system of globalisation in order to ensure that it is fairer and that it ensures that there will be shared workers' rights across the world and that environmental standards will be upheld. We do not want chlorinated chicken shipped in from the United States, Peru or wherever as a response to the inequities of globalisation. That is where I think Brexit is going and that is the fundamental weakness in it.

Politically, where do we stand? We are one of the countries that probably benefits the most from globalisation because we are one of the most globalised, most trading and most open countries in the context of international investment, especially from the United States. We are in a particularly important and difficult position. Our position should be based on that wider perspective. We should be setting really high standards for a new globalisation to answer Mr. Bannon, Mr. Johnson and company.

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