Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Government came within a whisker of ratifying the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA. If it were not for the 100 civil society organisations, trade unions and Opposition parties rallying on Friday evening, CETA could have been passed today with just 55 minutes of debate and a simple vote in the Dáil without this House having any say in the matter at all. People power clearly worked to postpone the vote but the battle is far from over. There are some very serious questions to be answered by Green Party Ministers.Why did they let this go on to the Dáil schedule with a mere 55-minute debate? Why, if the Government is so confident of the benefits of this deal, is it not happy to debate it? Why, if it is so cocksure of the protections included in CETA, is it running scared of having it discussed in the Dáil and Seanad? Why will it not conduct an assessment of the impact of the trade agreement? It is clear from this morning that there has been a Damascene conversion on the part of the Green Party leadership. The same cannot be said for the environmental NGOs, the human rights organisations and the environmental lawyers. The CETA trade deal has not changed since the leader of the Green Party was so vehemently against it. It still sets up a one-way corporate court system that involves a special tribunal that gives corporations special rights to sue states for laws, regulations and government measures that potentially affect their business. Corporate courts are a legacy of colonialism.