John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt that after all of this, world trade as we knew it before the announcements were made will not be the same. Companies will be affected. That is before we even get to the hangover of whatever arrangement is reached throughout the world once these tariffs kick into gear completely and have the effect that I fear they will have on the SME sector and exporters in this country. How ready is the Government? I know we will conduct our negotiations through and with the European Union, but what happens at home?

I have listened carefully to debates here over the past few weeks, and in every one there has been criticism of one sector or another. What is holding us back? I would say bureaucracy is a dead weight in every single Department. It is a dead weight that is not allowing us, for example, to move Irish Water to where it should be in terms of our progress and development as a country. Local government is the same way. The administration is not dealing with local matters as it should, and it is causing difficulties at local level. Representatives of local radio stations were in Leinster House earlier to highlight the difficulties in their sector and ask for help.

The Mercosur and CETA deals have been mentioned. I would not like to see the Government doing a deal at any cost. There are issues with CETA and Mercosur which we need to be hard-nosed about if we are to save our agricultural sector and expand markets. This change in the world order in the area of trade must cause us to focus again on our trade with Taiwan and on the access through that country - a democracy - to the rest of Asia. We are surely not going to continue to be blinkered about what that country has to offer. It is never mentioned here. Its president is never congratulated on election, but Taiwan is a great democracy and offers so much if we would only engage. Watch what is happening in Europe. Taiwan is building the biggest computer chip factory in Germany, and we do not want to recognise it. We have to take off the blinkers, look beyond where we are today and start to understand when all of this change came about in the context of trade and trade agreements.

I also believe we need to look to the people we represent. The Government’s first obligation is to keep our people safe. While we do all of these preparatory works in Europe and engage with Washington and everywhere else, we need to look at home to see whether we can shake off the red tape and deal with the issues to make life a bit better for the people we represent and to ensure that we have plans in place to safeguard their quality of life if all of this should change our economic circumstances.

We had an opportunity in 2008 when the troika was here, but we did not introduce the reforms that were necessary beyond that date. We will now pay a price because the question will be asked as to how nimble and prepared we are as a country and how we will keep our people safe. There is so much going on in Ireland - we have heard it again here today in the debate – such as the children’s hospital and all sorts of issues with regard to the care of our people. We do not seem to be on the top of our game. We must look at home as well as abroad.

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