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

I will just have time to comment on a few issues here. I will comment on the Tories' legacy Bill and two of the industrial disputes currently taking place in Northern Ireland, and then I will see as to whether I might squeeze in another point. The legacy Bill was well summed up by Suzanne Breen, writing in the Belfast Telegraph, when she wrote:

The Tories bill includes not only an effective amnesty for perpetrators, it also shuts down all new civil cases by victims' families and Police Ombudsman investigations as well as inquests which haven't yet opened. This goes far beyond preventing the odd Army veteran standing in a dock. It is the State shutting down all avenues for the public airing of its squalid little secrets.

Ms Breen also notes that this involves cases that involve British state collusion with loyalist paramilitaries and increasing allegations of the British state protecting its own high-level informers involved in killings by the IRA. This illustrates an important point that the Socialist Party has made, that not only can we not rely on the British state for justice, we cannot rely on any of the sectarian forces in the North to subject their own role during the Troubles to real scrutiny.

I will use this Chamber to condemn the threat by Ulster University management effectively to lock out teaching staff if they engage in a marking boycott as part of legitimate industrial action to protect pay and pensions and to challenge the increasing casualisation of employment. I recently visited Belfast and spent some time on the Unite picket lines organised by striking Caterpillar workers. These workers are seeking a decent pay increase from a company that describes itself as a dividend aristocrat. It has paid increased dividends every year for 28 years. These workers have now been left out on the picket lines without any give from this dividend aristocrat for six weeks. While the company continues to enjoy business relations with data centres in the Republic, including some of the biggest tech names in the world, these workers are left outside for six weeks.

These big tech companies like to project themselves as being mindful of their social responsibilities. Maintaining business connections with a company that is playing hardball against strikers does not seem very socially responsible to me or to others. Those companies might do well to urge Caterpillar to treat its workforce more fairly and with more respect. I intend to return to this issue in the near future if this dispute is not solved on the basis of justice.

I would have liked to make some points about the protocol but I cannot deal with that issue in a serious fashion in 40 seconds. That is another issue to which I hope to return quite soon.

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