Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am going to start with a statement of first principles. Reference has been made to the national interest. We care about the interests of working-class people.

When we say working-class people, we mean the interests of working-class people here in the Republic of Ireland, the interests of working-class people in Northern Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant, and the interests of working-class people in England, Scotland and Wales, and right across the European Union. We will judge this agreement on how well it serves the interests of working-class people or otherwise, as the case may be. For us, the key questions are whether this agreement guarantees jobs, living standards and peace. Will it serve to heal sectarian division or will it serve to exacerbate it?

Apart from the previous speaker, not a single Deputy has referred to the fact that the politics of neoliberalism runs through this document like the stitching on a jacket. To focus on just one example, the question of state intervention, article 16 of Annex 4 on page 373 states: "The Union and the [UK] acknowledge that anti-competitive business practices, concentrations of [industries] and State interventions have the potential to distort the proper functioning of markets and undermine the benefits of trade liberalisation." Pages 465 to 469 refer to limiting state aid for postal services, broadband, railways and airports etc.

We hear much talk of division in the British Conservative Party, government instability and a UK general election. The Taoiseach, British Prime Minister May and the EU negotiators are all no doubt aware that the likely winner of that election is Mr. Jeremy Corbyn. Neither are they blind to the fact that Mr. Corbyn has pledged to reverse the many of the cases of privatisation put in place by British Governments going back to the time of Mrs. Thatcher. He has pledged to reverse rail and water privatisation and he has pledged to renationalise the mail. State aid has been pledged by him to help build a million new homes. How many of these will be permitted under this deal? None of these will be permitted. If this is a deal for Brexit, it is clearly a deal for a Tory Brexit. It is pro-market, pro-privatisation and pro-rich. It is against nationalisation, public services and the interests of the working class.

That is not a surprise given who was at the talks. The Tory Government and the EU top officialdom represent the interests of big business elites. Nobody in these negotiations represented the interests of working-class people. The interests of working-class people need to be represented now. The Minister for Finance indicates a hard Brexit could cost 40,000 jobs. The ESRI has indicated that wage cuts could be in the 5% to 10% range for workers in agrifood, tourism and manufacturing. The ESRI, the Nevin Economic Research Institute and the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government all agree that Brexit will mean more rent rises in the big cities. In Northern Ireland, Bombardier welcomed the deal and then announced the destruction of 500 jobs, or 10% of its Northern Ireland work force.

There has been much talk of "red lines" having been laid down by the various parties engaged in the negotiations to date. It is time for the organised working-class movement to lay down its red lines. No to job losses, no to wage cuts, no to cuts in services or an exacerbation of the housing crisis and, importantly, no to sectarian division. I will return to that point in a moment. The bosses should be put on notice that any and all attempts to attack our jobs, pay and conditions will meet with real resistance and no holds barred. We call for the convening of an emergency conference with the widest possible participation of workers’ representatives from workplaces across Ireland, North and South, alongside trade unionists from Britain. Such a conference should host a full and democratic discussion on how best to defend and fight for the interests of workers and the communities they come from. Our hope is that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions will take responsibility for the convening of such a conference. Should the congress decide not to take such a step, our hope would be that a coalition of the trade union bodies prepared to do so would do so.

The trade union movement represents 800,000 members in Ireland, including 200,000 members in the North. The trade union movement has more than 6 million members in Britain and it has the potential to be a powerful force intervening in the matter. Such a conference should dispel the myth that workers’ rights have been handed down by a benevolent European Union. This turns reality on its head. The European Union has been central to waging a war on workers, particularly given its role in troika austerity programmes, as we have experienced in this country. It did it along with right-wing governments like the Irish Government. Who has really fought for workers’ rights and how are they really won? This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Ford strike in Dagenham, which forced a Labour Government to concede the Equal Pay Act. The incredibly strong strike of 8,500 council workers in Glasgow recently, which the BBC described as "one of the biggest ever strikes in the UK on the issue of equal pay" is testament to the fact that these rights are won through struggle. The trade union movement must reject the false choice of this deal versus the UK walking out of the EU. In the words of Mr. Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, "Unite utterly opposes the false choice of a bad deal versus no deal." This should become the position of the movement as a whole.

There is another reason the trade union movement must reject false choices on this issue. Both this deal and the UK crashing out of the EU with no deal contain within those processes the potential for sectarian polarisation in Northern Ireland. This deal provides for extra non-customs checks on some types of goods passing between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK in certain circumstances in approximately two years. In other words, an east-west border could begin to emerge as early as December 2020. That is not even to mention the North-South Border, which I will return to later. In that sense, this deal will add to the insecurities felt about the future by many ordinary Protestants. If there is a perception over time that their identity is being diminished, it could provoke a serious reaction, as we have seen in the past. The real issue here is not the DUP. The real issue relates to the concerns and fears of ordinary working-class Protestant people. Is there any chance we could see those concerns being dealt with in a more serious and sensitive way in the media here rather than the patronising portrayals that we see so often? That would be a step forward.

Even if the parliamentary arithmetic had been different after the previous general election and there had been no DUP-Tory deal, the opposition of Northern Ireland Protestants to any perception of an east-west border being created would still be a factor to be weighed. Equally, on the basis of this deal being rejected now with a move to a hard border, there is the potential for a strong reaction from the Catholic community. Border posts, customs posts or any physical manifestation of a hard border would become symbols of a denial of the national aspirations of the Catholic population and would not be accepted in any way. They would be opposed in a vocal and very active way. Trade Union, which unite people across the sectarian divide, should take action against any moves which would harden the border or raise the prospect of an east-west border in the Irish Sea.

When our colleagues in People Before Profit state, as they do in their amendment, that the Brexit crisis must not be used as a pretext by employers or the Government to enforce wage restraint etc., we can only agree with them.

On the other hand, when they issue a call for a Border poll in the same amendment, we must fundamentally disagree. A Border poll does not offer any solution to the issues raised by the Brexit negotiations or to the national question in Ireland. The logic of a Border poll is based on the mathematics of sectarianism. It either means a continued coercion of the Catholic population into the status quoor a vote that would attempt to coerce the Protestant population into a state that it would refuse to accept.

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