Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The EU's shame is on display in the Greek islands at the moment. Its pretence to be some bastion of progressivity is exposed with the harrowing and terrible scenes of thousands of desperate men, women and children fleeing the most horrendous circumstances of war, oppression, displacement and conflict and then being penned up in this way, subject to violence and living in the most appalling conditions. It exposes the horrible priorities and moral bankruptcy of the EU that we are going to spend €38 billion on beefing up fortress Europe to keep human beings out. It is nothing more than shameful. That this most recent wave of the crisis results essentially from the rotten deal we did with the brutal and repressive regime of Erdogan, and other similar deals we have done with rotten, vicious, brutal militias in Libya and so on, should bring shame to the EU. Deputy Paul Murphy and later Deputy Bríd Smith will take this issue up in more detail. I expect our representatives in Europe to speak out about this and ask to end the inhumane policy of keeping these human beings out. Instead of putting resources into more military spending, Frontex and more fortress Europe security, they should be put into giving a welcome to people fleeing here, providing the resources and services we need for them and for all of our citizens in Europe and ending the shameful treatment of these desperate people.

The dominant issue in Europe now is the coronavirus. I know it will be discussed later but there is a European dimension to this global crisis we now face. As we speak, the figures are rising in the EU. We need to address a number of issues at European level. First, we must say that any actions we need to take to address this crisis and threat that may run foul of intellectual property rules around vaccines and research in these areas, or proprietary or property rules governing medicine and its distribution - for example, relating to the use of the capacity of private, for-profit hospitals to deal with the capacity problems we may face - should be taken. If rules, including fiscal or state aid rules, need to be broken to address any of these issues, that should be done. It is terribly important that we do that. We should also say that if there is any profiteering across Europe on the back of this crisis involving people trying to raise prices and profiteer from shortages in personal protective equipment, hand sanitisers or any of the medicines people may need to access, it should be severely punished. Severe sanctions should be imposed on any sign of that across Europe. I want to make those points about containing the virus, notwithstanding the debate later this evening on our specific situation here in Ireland.

Any talk of commitment to dealing with climate change is completely incompatible with anything other than abandoning the Mercosur deal. We should be saying that loud and clear. We should also be saying that state aid rules should be completely suspended when it comes to taking the sort of emergency measures or action necessary to address climate change issues. We need to start to say that very loud and clear because many of the state aid rules are completely incompatible with the necessary actions we have to take to address the climate emergency.

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