Ms Clare Daly:

I am experiencing brain freeze because it is impossible to respond to the debate. I will first respond to the point made by Senator Boyhan, and I think this should be the start. It is literally impossible for us to even answer one of the questions properly. It would be an idea to come back to themed discussions whereby we dig deep into some of the things such as the rule of law, trade, climate change or whatever, because that would be the only way we could do justice to these issues.

There are a huge number of positives about the European Union, but we must be honest and say that it has reached crisis point. It is at a crisis point in terms of climate because he truth is that Europe's goals are not even compliant with the Paris Agreement. They just are not, and that is the truth. Military carbon emissions are not counted. When we table motions in the European Parliament on the matter, they are defeated.

We now have an energy crisis across Europe. One of the reasons for this is that we have paid lip service to the idea of renewables and opted for the idea that gas is a transition fuel. It is not. We have a major problem now because of that reliance because it has delayed the implementation of renewables and we are paying the price for that. The response in Europe is not a realisation that we need to cop on and deal with that. many member states are saying that the targets we have set are too ambitious and that we need to row back and keep producing fossil fuels. One can see that division as well in rule-of-law issues in terms of fundamental rights. I refer to the violation of fundamental rights not just in Hungary and Poland but also in Bulgaria. There has been vicious treatment meted out to the LGBTQI community in Bulgaria but nobody mentions that because the ruling party in Bulgaria is quite well in with the ruling elite Europe. There are many issues. We would all like to see a co-operative Europe so we need to put a bit more meat on this. I am not even going to mention the topics because I cannot do them justice. I suggest, however, that we come back and deal with them in more depth.