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

It has been said that the issue of Brexit will dominate Irish politics in the weeks and months ahead. While that may be the case and while Solidarity and the Socialist Party intend to give it the time and attention it deserves, I make the following point in the first week of the new Dáil term. We will not allow the Government to use Brexit to push issues like housing and nurses' pay to the back of the queue. There is a housing crisis and a nursing pay strike is on the way. These are issues which cannot wait. Any attempt by the Government to push them to the back of the queue will be resisted by those on these benches. We note the fact that yesterday the Taoiseach attempted to use the Brexit crisis to make a case against the nurses in the Dáil. We note also that the alliance between the Fine Gael-led Government and Fianna Fáil has not only been extended, it has been strengthened. Those two parties should not presume to think something approximating to a national unity Government can succeed in putting the fight for workers' rights on the back burner for the duration of an emergency. If nurses are forced to strike for pay justice, they will have our full support and that of a majority of the population, Brexit crisis or no.

While we are interested in discussing the Government's preparedness for Brexit, we wish also to make some points about the preparedness for Brexit of the labour movement. History shows that Ireland's capitalist establishment, like the capitalist establishments of all nations, will always and everywhere use a national emergency to its own advantage and against the interests of working people. We saw that in Ireland during the Emergency of 1939 to 1945 when wages were frozen and strikes were banned for a full five years. These measures were introduced by the supposedly great Seán Lemass who was never a friend of the working class. I am not in any sense comparing the seriousness of the war years to Brexit, but a crisis is a crisis and the capitalist establishment is a leopard which has not changed its spots. Just before Christmas, we heard from Mr. Brendan McGinty, formerly of IBEC, that for those sectors most at risk, the imposition of pay freezes as an emergency measure may have to be considered or allowed for. We have also heard talk of mass redundancies, price increases and increases in the cost of rent. For these reasons and more, we repeat our call on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to convene an emergency conference of workers' representatives on the island of Ireland from workplaces, unions and communities to prepare urgently to defend the interests of working people in the crisis ahead. We call also on individual unions to take the lead if congress fails to act or to act in time.

The particular issue we wish to highlight tonight in respect of the Government's preparedness is the position in which Aer Lingus may find itself in the event of a no-deal Brexit. On pages 37 and 38 of the Government's Preparing for the Withdrawal of the UK from the EU on 29 March 2019, it is stated:

Regarding the requirement in EU law that air carriers must be majority-owned and controlled by EU legal or natural persons, the Commission has underlined that it is essential for companies that wish to be recognised as EU air carriers to take all the necessary measures to ensure that they meet this requirement on 29 March 2019.

Can the Minister inform the House as to the measures Aer Lingus is taking to meet this requirement? Aer Lingus would have had no difficulty meeting it before 2006 when it was majority-owned and controlled by the Irish State. However, privatisation was introduced by Fianna Fáil and supported by Fine Gael in 2006. By 2015, the process was complete and Aer Lingus was no longer majority-owned and controlled by the people of Ireland. It is now majority-owned and controlled by a capitalist concern, the International Aviation Group, the headquarters of which are in London. What does this mean for Aer Lingus if the UK crashes out? What steps is Aer Lingus taking to deal with the problem? We are not being told and commercial sensitivity is being used as the reason. While the people of Ireland no longer own Aer Lingus, we continue to rely on it greatly and we deserve to have these questions answered. Rather than to allow any doubts on the position of Aer Lingus to remain, we propose the Government take it back into 100% public ownership, paying compensation only on the basis of proven need. We will be asking questions on this later as well as some questions on the position of Ryanair in the event of a crash-out Brexit.

I turn to the political crisis in the UK. The Government of Theresa May may have survived the motion of no confidence, but I suspect it has lost the confidence of its people. With 14 million people in Britain living below the poverty line and May's failure to win support for her neoliberal Brexit, the time has come for her to go. The time has come for a general election. We support those in the working-class movement in Britain who are calling for a general election. We want to see the Tories out and a Corbyn government with socialist policies in. That would mean a very different type of Brexit to Theresa May's bargain-basement Brexit which is based on privatisation and a race to the bottom for working people. Instead, it would be one based on a rejection of the EU's neoliberal rules, a defence of workers' rights and human rights and a step towards a socialist Europe. We will judge each piece of Brexit legislation on the basis of whether it improves the interests of working class people, harms them or is neutral in that respect. We will look at each Bill on a case-by-case basis. Our principles and viewpoints have been set out broadly speaking in my speech. That is our position.

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