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

While there is a lot of rhetoric in this debate about protecting workers, it is necessary to take the veil away from some of that rhetoric from the Government and some Opposition parties. Behind that veil, what they are really talking about is protecting the big US multinationals that have operations here, acting on the basis that big pharma and tech have the same interests as workers. That is simply not true. Look at Apple, which fought tooth and nail alongside our own Government to not pay us €14 billion in corporation tax it owed. Look at Pfizer which has been cutting jobs here long before the tariffs were threatened. Look at Twitter, now X, which fired 140 workers here by email just like Elon Musk is now doing for Trump. This is the moment to get out of our dependence on US multinational corporations. We have warned for years about the unsustainable model into which the Irish Government and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael successively were digging us deeper and deeper. Those warnings were ignored. Their only concern is their bottom line and profits. They are not interested in jobs or wages and are certainly not interested in workers’ rights.

The same is true of Donald Trump. What did the pathetic, grovelling visit, which was hailed by much of the media as a diplomatic success, result in? Which tariffs did it avert? Which massive new tariffs on pharmaceuticals did it avert? It proves that pandering to him is a waste of time. There should be no acceptance at this moment to drive down health and safety, labour and environmental standards. That is clearly an offensive interest of Trump. There should no acceptance of the idea that the way out of this is to appease Trump by saying we are going to buy more liquefied natural gas, LNG, or more weapons, which will deepen the ecological crisis we are in. There should be no acceptance of a tax on workers’ living standards. People Before Profit’s only concern in this is to say “No” to attacks on workers’ living standards and health and safety standards. This is not our crisis and we should not be forced to pay for it.

The last time the Government forced us to bail out the banks, it imposed years of crippling austerity that destroyed living standards. The EU stood behind it all the way, threatening a bomb going off in Dublin in order to ensure that working people in Ireland paid more of the cost of the European banking crisis than anywhere else in Europe. History must not be allowed to repeat itself. Rather than bailing out US multinationals, the Government must be forced to bail out workers and protect living standards.

Between the Future Ireland Fund, the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund, the Apple tax money and Exchequer surpluses, the Government is sitting on more than €25 billion. That money should be used to bail out workers and invest in a new economic model. The maximum rates of jobseeker’s pay-related benefit must be increased to ensure all affected workers can benefit from it and do not suffer large drops in their income.

In the event of layoffs by US multinationals and knock-on job losses in the wider economy, all workers must be protected, not just those who work for the multinationals. If US pharmaceutical companies say they want to leave, then instead of bailing them out, the Government should take that manufacturing into public ownership, using the skilled workforce that we now have, and direct it towards other markets. We also now need to invest in an alternative economic model based on quality, green public jobs. Ireland has a real opportunity to become a world leader in onshore and offshore renewable energy, including for export, via interconnectors.

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