Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The World Economic Forum is at the centre of all sorts of far-right conspiracy theories these days. These theories suggest that the forum rules the world. I do not believe the World Economic Forum rules the world or that there is a conspiracy here. In fact, it is simply capitalism. Capitalism operates by the governments of the world responding to the needs, interests, concerns and wishes of the ruling classes in the world, that is, the multimillionaires and billionaires. Events like the World Economic Forum at Davos are where those interests are transferred. There are meetings where these billionaires who control the world's economy say what they would like to happen and, largely speaking, politicians like the Taoiseach take that on and try to implement it.

There are some things that fuel the conspiracy theories. People who come up to me who have been impacted by some of these far-right conspiracies say that climate change could not be real because otherwise the governments and elites of the world would not be behaving in the way they are. The inaction of the world's leaders leads to that conspiracy theory. The fact that one in ten attendees at the World Economic Forum flew in, a large proportion of whom flew in on private jets spewing out huge amounts of carbon emissions, fuels this idea. People think that if climate change is as real as they say it is, and it is, then why are these people behaving in this manner?

The other thing that fuels the conspiracy theories is massive inequality and the illogical nature of a world that sees the richest five people doubling their wealth over the last five or six years while the poorest 5 billion get poorer and, in this country, the richest two people having the same wealth as the bottom 50%. That fuels those conspiracy theories because people cannot understand how we can have a system that allows this to happen.

See this speech in context