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

I welcome President Metsola to Dublin and Ireland. I welcome her commitment to supporting continued peace on this island and to preventing any return to a hard border in this country. I also welcome her comments about the need to address the cost-of-living and housing crises that are gripping Europe and significantly impacting this country. I have to say, however, that it is long past time the European institutions acknowledged the role they played, particularly in response to the economic crisis after 2008 and the decision of the Troika to impose swingeing, cruel and brutal austerity in this country. That is not an historical matter and it has left us with a dire and cruel housing crisis that is inflicting utter misery on record numbers of people in homeless accommodation and tens of thousands of people who are affected by the lack of affordable and public housing. Europe has a great responsibility for the decisions it made in that regard, which also affected the crisis that continues to grip our health service as we were forced to cull thousands of health workers. That has left us a grim legacy in our health services, which are overrun.

I also want to question the assertion President Metsola made about "a superpower of values" and principles. She rightly condemns Vladimir Putin's brutal and invasion of and inexcusable and criminal warmongering in Ukraine, but fails at the same time to condemn the crimes against humanity and the apartheid system that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people, as was recently publicised by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. When she went to the Knesset in May last year she did not say a word about the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and did not condemn the apartheid regime. The European Union does not call for sanctions in the way it has called for them against Russia.

It is does not assert the legitimacy of the Palestinian people's right to resist an illegal occupation of their land and territory and the criminal apartheid regime that is imposed on them. Those double standards cannot stand. That is not a superpower of principles but one of double standards. Ms Metsola will know that six MEPs from the parliament of which she is president were denied access to go in to monitor the crimes of Israel against the Palestinian people. The humans rights organisations in Palestine wrote to her asking her to speak out against that, which she has failed to do. We need consistency and real principles when it comes to these matters.

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