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

The campaign itself would be a sectarian head count and carry the risk of ratcheting up sectarian tensions. The only solution to the problems of sectarianism is to build a powerful workers' movement that can challenge both unionism and nationalism with socialist policies, including through the creation of a new mass political party that represents Catholic and Protestant working-class people. The real guarantors of peace in Northern Ireland are these people, who have been prepared to take to the streets to take action against the forces of sectarianism. The EU is not a guarantor of peace. Any idea that it is completely contradicted by the recent calls by Merkel and Macron for a European army and the plans to ramp up EU military spending as well as the militarisation contained in PESCO, which includes Irish Government participation.

Nor is the EU a guarantor of the right of minorities. This was shown recently by EU support for the Spanish state in repressing the national aspirations and rights of people in Catalonia. Last week, UN rapporteur Professor Philip Alston said of the 14 million people who live in poverty in Tory Britain: "a lot of misery, a lot of people who feel the system is failing them, a lot of people who feel the system is really just there to punish them". It was this anger against the system that carried the Brexit vote. It has the power to rock the establishment once again by bringing down the crisis ridden Tory Government and bringing a Corbyn government to power. Socialists in Ireland would welcome the return of a Corbyn government. If such a government were to adopt a position of socialist opposition to the European Union, it would transform the situation. A Corbyn government should seek to reopen negotiations and demand an entirely different relationship with the EU, including new trade and custom arrangements based on the interests of working-class people, not the 1%. Corbyn could speak over the heads of the Commission, reaching out to class people across Europe in rejecting neoliberal rules, calling for co-ordinated action for green energy on a Europe-wide basis and popularising a socialist vision of Europe. A left government would be able to call on workers throughout the Continent to fight the race to the bottom in their own countries, mobilising against attempts by their own governments or the EU to pursue punitive measures against other workers, be they in Britain, Ireland or elsewhere. The workers' movement in Ireland should mobilise its resources as part of a Europe-wide fight back.

Socialists are in favour of a genuinely united Europe. This will be possible only with the socialist transformation of society, allowing the coming together of nations of Europe in a democratic, Europe-wide confederation. We fight for socialism in Ireland, with full democratic rights for the Protestant community. We are in favour of a free and voluntary socialist federation of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales and a socialist "United States of Europe".

I started by asking whether this agreement served the interests of working-class people. Our answer is that it does not. For this reason, we will vote against the Government's proposal. The real challenge is for the working-class movement to carve out a genuine alternative to this system and what it offers to people, and to put the interests of working people at the heart of building such an alternative.

See this speech in context