Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

The Taoiseach and the Government are using Trump's tariff threats as an excuse to exhume the full ratification of CETA and bring it back from the dead. There are good reasons that the Supreme Court buried it back in 2022 when it ruled that the ratification of CETA would be unconstitutional because it gives extreme powers to shadowy private investor courts that have no democratic oversight and cannot be overruled by Irish judges.

If CETA is passed and fully ratified as the Government wants, big multinational companies will be able to sue the Irish State for loss of future earnings if it does anything that impinges on their profits - it is known as indirect expropriation - regardless of the social or environmental costs. All they would have to do is incorporate a subsidiary in Canada to be able to use CETA's investor court system, ICS. If restrictions on data centres are brought in, which with the Taoiseach would not agree, for environmental reasons or to safeguard our water and energy, Amazon or Google could sue us for billions of euro. There is no way for Ireland to withdraw once it has been fully implemented, only the EU as a whole can do so. Why tie the hands of future Governments and subordinate us to foreign multinational companies?

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