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

I remind the Minister of State it was places in the UK, such as Holyhead in Anglesey, that voted overwhelmingly to remove themselves from the EU precisely because they were not seeing any benefits from it. They were the areas most devastated by poverty and most removed from what we describe as the benefits of that Union.

One of the single greatest threats, as we engage in an arms build-up of €800 billion, will be poverty and a sense that people are not feeling the benefits of EU membership. It is therefore okay for us to say that we believe in the European Union and that we also believe those overseeing it, such as Ursula von der Leyen, the EPP and others who are driving it in a direction it was never intended to go, are a threat to the concepts we hold dear in that regard. Looking at the agenda for the Council, one cannot step away from the fact the game has changed. We obviously understand Russia’s horrendous invasion of Ukraine has changed the game, but we also need to see what our role is in that. There has never been a period in history where an arms build-up of that magnitude, with so much money being invested in rearmament and building weapons, has been done in the name of peace. It does not happen. History repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce and there are many similarities between what is happening at the moment and what was happening in the build-up to the First World War and the horrors that happened. If we separate ourselves from that, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes. That is all we are saying.

The European Union, in its ideals, is a vehicle for peace. If we invest solely in weapons and neglect the lived experience of people in their homes - or even in their bedrooms, when it comes to what we see with the banning of Pride parades and making it a hostile environment for LGBTQ communities - we will not have an EU built on peace. We think we should stand for those ideals and we will not neglect to stand up, advocate and shout, because we are pro-EU. As we are pro-EU, we also believe in the trade agreements that have humanitarian clauses built into them that should be activated. The EU made a trade agreement with the State of Israel. Article 2 of that is a humanitarian clause that states that if it is violated there cannot be trade. We have been vociferous in saying that because we are pro-EU we should stand up for those agreements and ideals, yet we are being told we are not and that we are like Farage. We are not, actually. We are far from it. We believe in a peace project and one that does not prioritise military spend over basic humanitarian decency, a peace project that means people can be free to be whoever they may be and love whoever they may want. When that is being neglected, we will stand up. We will stand up especially when it is nations like Germany that are arming states like Israel to commit a genocide against the people of Gaza. If we do not scream at the top of our lungs, we neglect what the Minister of State tells us we are against, namely, a European Union project based on peace. That is all we are asking for. We want an Irish State that believes in neutrality, that does not want to be a little dog barking behind the other, larger dogs of war but stays true to our principles. Every time that is being failed or neglected, the Minister of State will find us here standing up for the values we believe in.

Tariffs are of course going to be a threat to Ireland and the broader EU. We should work in unison with our EU partners to try to advance diplomacy. Nobody wins in a tariff war. Trump is bringing this to the table based on ego and being a vile person and we should not neglect to stand up for ourselves. I wonder what our EU counterparts thought of the Government’s St. Patrick’s Day visit when we did not stand up for those principles. I wonder what they thought when the Government allowed Trump to blast all over our EU colleagues.

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