Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Europe Day should be a moment for us in Ireland to reflect on our place in the European Union, on what we have achieved as part of the European Union but also what we have failed to achieve and what has been stilted through our membership and through some of the policies of the European Union. We have seen some real benefits to rural areas from our membership of the EU over the decades, including programmes such as LEADER. Unfortunately under its latest iteration, the LEADER programme, an EU-funded rural diversification programme, has resulted in money being cut to rural communities across Ireland.

We also have to be real and look at the Irish fishing industry, which has not done well out of EU membership. All sides of the House can agree that our fishing industry has been a sacrificial lamb since the 1970s when it comes to our place in Europe. We have to be real about these issues, we have to acknowledge them and we have to reflect on them. We also have to speak honestly to our European partners about these issues and seek to have them remedied. We also need to learn a lesson about the fate of marginal areas within Europe away from the core. We need to make sure that our rural areas are looked after and that they are not forgotten and left behind.

In this debate we cannot ignore the erosion of Ireland's neutrality and the movement at pace from within government, particularly in Fine Gael, but also from Fianna Fáil and the Taoiseach, who are pushing the agenda to strip Ireland of its cherished position of military neutrality. As a State, we have never been neutral on oppression, social justice, rights and humanitarian issues but we have been militarily neutral because we understand what it is to be a colony. We need to not get sucked into the machinations of former colonial powers.

The EU-Israel association agreement needs to be scrapped. Israel is committing genocide before the eyes of the world and is thumbing its nose at the international community. To those within the international community calling it out for its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people, it is thumbing its nose, happy to continue on because there are no meaningful sanctions. The Government, if it is to put action behind its words, needs to take these meaningful actions. If EU member states will not act to call it out, we must act unilaterally.

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