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

The Halle Institute for Economic Research recently estimated that 1 million jobs could be lost as a result of a no-deal Brexit. Of these, 176,000 would be lost in Germany and 91,000 would be lost in China. However, per head of population, nowhere would more jobs be lost than in the Republic of Ireland where it predicted 35,000 job losses or almost 2% of the entire workforce. A large number of these jobs would be in low-paid sectors such as agri-food.

The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, recently estimated that an increase in trade tariffs arising from a no-deal Brexit could increase the annual cost of a basket of goods here by between €892 and €1,360. It pointed out that lower income households would be impacted 70% more than the highest income groups as a result of spending a far greater percentage of their income on food and energy.

I do not have time to make points about rent or wages but I will make this point. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions should make it clear that working people will not be the whipping boys or whipping girls on the Brexit issue. If a price is to be paid, let it be paid by those who can best afford it. Having taken this position, the union movement should then organise to make it a reality. The first step is calling a nationwide gathering of workplace representatives and community activists via Zoom or some other means to discuss, plan and build resistance to this offensive against workers' interests.

On the detail of the Brexit Bill, people in the Republic of Ireland and the UK enjoy many rights, for example, freedom to travel to each other's jurisdictions, access to each other's social protection systems if a person goes to live in the other country and access to each other's health and education services on the same basis. This must continue to be the case. It must not be conditional on a deal or deals. These rights should be enshrined in law. We have already seen how an Irish Government revoked the rights of UK citizens here to vote in European elections. This must not happen to UK citizens here and it must not happen to Irish citizens in the UK. As I said, these rights should be enshrined in law.

The Tory Government's internal market Bill raised the prospect of east-west trade being conducted without checks. This, in turn, raises the prospect of European Union pressure being brought to bear on the Government here to introduce checks at the southern side of the Border. Not only would this do serious economic damage, it would also evoke memories of the Troubles and would be seen, particularly by the Catholic population in Northern Ireland, to copper-fasten partition.

Solidarity-People Before Profit and the Socialist Party will oppose any measure which would increase sectarian division among ordinary people. That includes any hardening of the Border North-South but also includes any hardening of the border east-west. Hardening of the border east-west would serve to increase the insecurity of ordinary Protestants about the future and generate a sense of being coerced into an economic united Ireland.

Solidarity-People Before Profit and the Socialist Party are also opposed to any attempt to resolve the national question via the coercion of one community over another, including in the form of a border poll. Instead, we need the coming together of working class people in common struggle on their common interests across the sectarian divide. That is needed now more than ever.

I will make some points about immigrants and immigrant rights. Neither the European Union nor the British Government can be trusted on the issue of the rights of immigrants. The European Union operates a fortress Europe policy which would be the envy of Donald Trump. It is a policy which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people by drowning in the Mediterranean.

As part of the Brexit process, the British Tory Government has introduced a racist immigration Bill as part of its so-called hostile environment policy strategy. This is a points-based immigration system based not on human need but on prioritising those with skills that can be profited from. Significant parts of this Bill have also gone through the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is no surprise whatever that the right-wing DUP allowed this. Sinn Féin also allowed, however. I have no doubt Sinn Féin Deputies will argue that Westminster held the reins, which is true, and that the full Bill did not go through the assembly, which is also true. However, a legislative consent motion was allowed through the Northern Ireland Assembly when opposition to it could and should have been registered in the strongest way to highlight and oppose the racist character of the Bill as a whole.

I will conclude with a couple of brief points about trade. The prospect of a US-UK trade deal in the context of a no-deal Brexit has been part of this debate. The incoming US President, Joe Biden, has warned Boris Johnson that there will be no deal between their two countries if the British Government meddles with the peace process. As I said, that issue has been raised in the course of the debate. An issue that has not been raised is the warning issued by War on Want when it pointed out that both Downing Street and the White House have what it described correctly as a "corporate agenda". Let us remember, despite some of the eulogies that have been given in the Dáil today, that Joe Biden is very well known in the United States as a corporate Democrat. As Barack Obama's Vice President between 2008 and 2016, he was an ardent support of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP. That trade agreement was vigorously opposed and campaigned against by trade union activists and environmental campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic as a development that would seriously undermine workers' rights and the environment.

A new trade deal between the US and the UK would raise those same issues again. It also could, and likely would, raise the prospect of the privatisation of Britain's National Health Service, NHS. A trade agreement would put increasing drugs bills on the agenda by way of the scrapping of the voluntary pricing and access scheme, VPAS, through which the NHS drives down medical costs and caps medical bills. If such a privatisation move is in prospect, it will not just be a huge issue for the people of England, Wales and Scotland but also for people on this island, particularly the people in the North who would be directly affected by it. This is something that working people would need to organise around and which socialists would see as a very important issue on which we should campaign.

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