Dáil debates

Tuesday, 10 May 2022

6:00 pm

Photo of Gary GannonGary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The writer John McGahern once wrote that Ireland was a peculiar place in the sense that it was a 19th century society right up to the mid-1970s and then it almost bypassed the 20th century. As we are asked to celebrate and reflect upon Europe Day in the national Parliament, that quote above all captures for me the pace of change that occurred in Irish society after we joined the EEC in 1973. My party, members of my generation and I were proud Europeans. We are Irish and European. The EU has its faults and I intend to address those in some detail, but it is important to begin by expressing my belief that the EU on the whole has been a force for good as a driver of economic and societal change in Ireland and, above all else, as a guarantor of peace for the Continent following the global conflicts that predated its existence. That peace has once more been threatened by violent despotism we all hoped had been consigned to the 20th century.

Membership of the EU has very clearly changed Ireland. We joined almost 50 years on from achieving independence from the UK and, as we did, I would argue we were a nation struggling for identity. It was a society upon which social conservatism was forced as a form of jingoistic patriotism. It was a state that in turn abandoned vital public services in health, education, care and welfare so that citizens were reliant on the Catholic Church to provide what a State ought to provide. It was an economy that was overly agrarian, protectionist and lacking in confidence. In December 1972, 84% of the people of this country voted to remove the special place afforded the Catholic Church in our Constitution. Earlier that year and on this date 50 years ago, almost an identical percentage of our population voted for Ireland to join what was then the EEC. It would be very wrong to point to that year or indeed to those referenda as the moment when Ireland threw off its cloak of conservatism on social or economic grounds - the various struggles for LGBTQI+ and reproductive rights or even the right to divorce testify to that - but for me, that was an important moment when the Irish people were very clear in their determination to chart a new course and to be outward looking to the point of being part of a collective bigger than ourselves.

The Taoiseach touched on this point in his speech when he said that membership gave us the impetus needed to strengthen our human rights record, drive forward civil and social rights, introduce gender equality legislation, improve the protection of workers' rights and become a much more tolerant, kinder and inclusive country than Ireland had been up to that point. I also wish to highlight the role civil society played in driving that forward but we should not in any way undermine the role of the EU in giving us that confidence. It is important to note that Ireland in 1972 was a much darker place than it is today. I think this gives us the legitimacy to point to the type of rule of law issues with which we were dealing in the EU before the invasion of Ukraine. We should not be afraid to challenge those who do not meet those standards, be they friend or foe. In particular, I am pointing to the horrific sequence of LGBT exclusion zones that exist in Poland, the exclusion of members of the community and the banning of literature. All of this is very much prevalent and we should not forget about it nor should we shy away from confronting those and holding them to a standard. There are rule of law mechanisms to which we need to return and we should apply zero tolerance when discrimination abounds in the EU or even among our friends that wish to join.

It would be remiss of me not to talk about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is important to reflect upon the fact that, as missiles rain down on Ukrainian cities, towns and people, one of the calls being made most loudly from Ukraine involves becoming a member of the EU. It is to our credit and that of the Irish State that we have been most vocal in supporting those calls, but what is to be the legacy of the collective response to this most horrific attack by the forces of Putin on the people of Ukraine? It has been said that this too will pass. We need to be there to support the rebuilding of Ukrainian cities and welcome it into the EU, but we also need to look at the factors that contributed to the Russian state being able to engage in this horrendous assault on Ukraine and reflect on how we remove ourselves from dependence on fossil fuel extraction, which has fuelled this war. We cannot simply say that with these sanctions and our unwillingness to engage with the Russian Federation, we are going to engage with undemocratic regimes elsewhere, be they Saudi Arabia or in South America. We must remove ourselves from dependence on fossil fuel extraction.

We hear much about the militarisation of the EU and we must oppose it in every single way. In the case of previous wars, we have seen great increases in industrialisation. There needs to be a new green impetus where fossil fuel extraction is eliminated. We need to invest in solar, wind and, if necessary, wave energy. This will allow us to remove ourselves entirely from dependence on these types of despotic regimes that are funded by this type of fossil fuel extraction.

I am also very conscious of another threat facing the EU. When we talk about the EU and Ireland's role in it, we are also told that Ireland's membership of the EU has given us access to a market of 440 million people. The EU must be much more than a market-based economy. A total of 96.5 million people are living in or are at risk of poverty. This is a massive threat to the EU. As evidence of this, I often point to a place just across the water from us, namely, Holyhead in Anglesey in Wales, which I believe is the poorest part of the UK. As we approach the six-year point of the Brexit referendum, we should remember that this part of the UK, which was totally reliant on exports coming from Ireland to the EU, voted to leave. The average household income there is just under €14,000. This town was totally dependent on exports to the EU before the UK left the EU, yet it still voted to leave. If people do not feel the benefits and warmth of EU membership, they will remove themselves from it. Poverty is not often discussed in the EU. I believe we can be leaders in confronting it.

We can no longer tolerate a situation where anti-poverty strategies are brought forward every five years and simply left on a shelf to rot, because poverty, among other things, is a huge threat to the very foundation of the European Union.

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