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

As we are discussing post-EU Council statements I am glad it is the Minister of State who has joined us. Earlier we brought a motion on the triple lock and during his contribution the Minister of State accused me and members of my party of being anti-EU. He went further and almost compared us to Farage. That was an interesting point. I did not see the Minister of State doing any of the kind of rebuilding that members of my party had to do following the far-right protests and agitation in our constituencies. As for our being anti-EU, that simply has not been the case with the Social Democrats from our foundation. Deputies Gibney, Hearne and I all contested European elections on pro-EU platforms because we understand that, as the Minister of State mentioned, it was a vehicle for peace. As we are pro-EU we wanted to stand for the values of what we understand the EU to be in its original conception, which was as a vehicle for peace. What we dispute is the change happening now where there is an arms build-up. There are very clearly weapons races. The Minister of State criticised my colleague, Deputy Hearne, for his contribution last week on having a war on poverty, but it is for that very reason we are pro-EU.

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