Speeches

Madam President, the wretched history of antisemitism and Islamophobia on this continent is measured in centuries. Both have produced horrific crimes. Neither has gone away. And our moral rejection of bigotry must be absolute and resolute. Hatred and dehumanisation lead all too quickly to violence and repression, and nobody from any minority should experience it. And I really wish I could say that that was the dominant approach here. But I can’t, because instead now Europe’s approach is to see novel forms of both bigotries reinforcing each other. So we see European governments parroting Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ tropes to dehumanise innocent victims in Gaza as violent and savage, enabling violence against them. We see false and cynical accusations of antisemitism against legitimate demonstrations condemning genocide. Rather than supporting these communities, Europe is dividing them, as it did in all the colonial years. The sooner we cut Israel loose, the better in the struggle against racism.

Mr President, our media and our social media is awash with hate speech and disinformation. Israeli officials are on air and online every day, spewing out the vilest, most despicable hate speech. Silicon Valley tech investors and the Israeli Government conspire in WhatsApp groups to shut down pro-Palestine voices online, and to work their contacts to set online narrative for Israel. But, of course, the Commission is not talking about the responsibility of platforms or the responsibility of anyone to do anything about any of that. Hate speech, interference: it’s only a problem when our lords and masters say that it’s a problem. The Israelis have called for targeting the entire Gaza population and are causing severe epidemics to break out. They’ve called Palestinians ‘human animals’. The children shouldn’t be there. This is hate speech. It’s disinformation and there’s pages of it. It spews out unchecked on all channels daily. And it has incited a genocide – a genocide that the Commission, the Council and a large majority in this Parliament are all in lockstep behind. So really it is an irony and a bit of a cheek that you come in here and pretend to care about hate speech and disinformation, when you clearly don’t. The sanctimonious lies, the hypocritical keening over our values: it doesn’t fool anyone anymore. The Emperor has no clothes!

Madam President and President, I listened very carefully to your opening remarks. And for me, I think, Romania is one of the most interesting European countries. I think the Romanian people are pretty much like the Irish people, in my experience, in terms of their approach to life. I spent a month in Timişoara and Bucharest in the spring of 1990 as a student leader from Ireland, and learned so much about the hopes and aspirations of Romanian citizens in the post-Ceauşescu years. And I think against that backdrop, for me, it’s quite unfortunate to see that, since joining the EU, so many Romanian people have been forced to leave the country or been hoovered up by Western Europe as a sort of pool of cheap labour, rather than having the opportunities that they should have had at home. I’m sorry to see that you ended up joining NATO and that you’re spending so much of your defence money on things that really should be spent on making people’s lives better. And I am sorry to see cases such as the one highlighted by my colleague about the very, very serious problems and questions that remain to be answered regarding the operation of the Romanian regulator, the ASF, because of the consequential impact not just on your own drivers, but also across the EU motor insurance sector. And I, too, am one of the Members of this House who for many months now have been raising questions about that regulator’s decision to withdraw the licence to Euroins Romania, which is obviously part of the largest independent insurance group in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe. Now, I know you know about that case, Mr President – and not just because my colleague raised it – but it is beyond curious that the Romanian regulator acted against this company three years after requesting them to take over City Insurance. Why did they do this? It is a fact that both the Bulgarian financial regulator and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development queried what your regulator was up to. Both of them approached the European authorities. One of the organisations produced a report cautioning against the consequences of this. They even produced a resolution proposal which would have mitigated the impacts, but nothing happened. And your country faces exposure to a EUR 500 million lawsuit, not to mention the broader impact beyond. Having brought this to the attention of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, who are supposed to mitigate these issues but who have failed to produce the report for Members of this Parliament – it’s been withheld from us – I’m deeply concerned about the security around this case. So I suppose my question, Mr President, is really quite a simple one. In the interests of the citizens of Romania and beyond, would you join us in supporting our call to the European Commission to initiate a comprehensive and independent review of this case?

Madam President, so far the EU and US response to Israeli genocide has been straight from the abuser’s handbook, DARVO: ‘deny, attack, reverse victim and offender’. And if that doesn’t work, just change the subject. So as the genocide in Gaza continues, you want to talk about everything but Gaza. You refused to put the item on an agenda, an agenda stacked with every cliché imaginable, from Venezuela to Iran, with pride of place given to the old reliable Russian interference. So across the pond, Special Agent Nancy Pelosi gives the signal, branding Palestine protesters, as Kremlin operatives, and like clockwork, the dark insinuations begin in Europe. Everyone can see what you’re doing. It’s tedious, it’s predictable. You’ve been doing it since 2016 and it isn’t going to work anymore. The mass movement is focussed like a laser on genocide, everyone knows it’s happening and Europe is... (The President cut off the speaker)

Mr President, the Climate Law is supposed to be our answer to the climate crisis – all-encompassing, supposed to involve all sectors. But there’s always one that we turn a blind eye to: militaries are responsible for about 5.5 % of global greenhouse-gas emissions, more than global aviation and shipping combined. If the global militaries were a country, they’d be the fourth-largest global emitter. Yet we guilt-trip families flying to Spain on their holidays, while all of the time increasing the military carbon bootprint. It’s an absolute joke. It’s totally unfair to exclude military missions from climate targets and reporting when we expect agriculture and other sectors to make cuts. We of course need an ambitious 2040 target, in line with the recommendations of the European Scientific Advisory Board, and we have to tackle this head-on. We can do that by promoting peace and demilitarisation, but instead we’re escalating military expenditure. The madness of war has to stop if we’re serious about the environment.

Mr President, since before Russia invaded Ukraine, NATO was in terminal decline. The scam of European moral superiority wasn’t working. A spent force discredited by decades of illegal wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Then along came Russia and took the bait, and the whole sorry saga went down the memory hole. European leaders parading around chanting about glory, draped in flags, pretending to care about democracy and international law while slobbering over arms contracts. It’s easy to see why you’d want the war to go on, but it’s over. While you’re amusing yourselves with your pantomime Churchill acts, Ukraine is running out of men and running out of hope. As European economies tank, few believe that victory is around the corner. Even the White House is backing off, and your support for Israel shows you never cared about democracy. It’s about handouts to arms companies and the might of the US.

Mr President, in a UN Security Council minute from January this year, it is stated ‘the persistent political impasse in Haiti remains a significant obstacle to effective governance.’ Well, they should know because those responsible were in the same room. Haiti is – God help them – an assisted state supported in nation building by the US, pretty much like they helped Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it any wonder it’s such a mess? All Haitian elections since 2004 have been monitored, constant foreign interference, effective military occupation, Western NGOs taking over basic public services. What’s left to vote for in a country no longer their own? Clearly, Western powers want to control Haiti’s destiny. They’re doing everything they can to colonise them again. Well, they should look back at Haiti’s history. This is an island of slaves who rose up and drove out their colonisers. You will not prevail. The people of Haiti will find a way to take back what is theirs.

Mr President, I think this is an important file, but it should be handled carefully. We don’t want data bogged down for minor misdemeanours. We have a history of problems in Ireland with the way in which our police force have managed traffic offences, with a lot of political or Garda interference in that. I think this should be about enforcing driving disqualification across the EU for offences where the seriousness of the behaviour results in major harm or death. Thanks to the heroic work of one Irish mother, Lucia O’Farrell, and the O’Farrell family, this issue is very well known in Ireland. In 2011, Shane O’Farrell had just finished his law exams. He was 23 years old and he was knocked down as he cycled home. He was left to die on the side of the road by a driver who failed to stop: a driver who had been at that time out on bail for multiple charges of criminality and traffic offences. A Lithuanian who was convicted of dangerous driving causing death but acquitted on the basis that he leaves the country. How is that fair to the people of Lithuania that he would be sent back, exposing them to danger? How is that justice?

Mr President, the Trilogue outcome that we’re discussing today is a fairly mixed one – some good stuff, some bad. However, the general theme that public sector systems should be interoperable is an important one and something that the EU has been championing for a while. Against that backdrop, it’s really strange that the Irish Government has recently concluded a contract for EUR 86 million for electronic health records management for our new children’s hospital with Epic Systems, whose software has been described infamously as not playing nicely with others. Other European countries that have implemented this record software have found it to be disastrous. In Finland and Denmark, 62% of doctors said they were not satisfied. In Norway, 90% of doctors said after using this system that it was a threat to patient health, and just dealing with this system cost one hospital EUR 10 million, monies that then couldn’t be used for a mental health centre. Why on earth would this be chosen in the world’s most expensive children’s hospital, which is already costing EUR 2 billion? It makes you think.

Mr President, solar panels just keep getting cheaper and cheaper, solar prices have dropped by 85 %, that’s something we should be delighted about. At those prices, we can actually undergo a rapid transition of our energy system and meet our climate goals with ease. But instead of that, we’re in here complaining about it. We say that other countries subsidising their solar panel manufacturing is unfair competition; it’s unjustified state aid. Well, it’s a bit ironic that you’re constantly in here saying about how the EU is a great leader in all of these things, and other countries are doing nothing. How is subsidising solar panels and renewable energy unjustified? Are we just in the business of trying to make money for shareholders, or do we want to change the global energy system? It is true, of course, that we need an EU solar manufacturing capability, like we do all strategic sectors, but this crisis is what happens when you liberalise the energy sector and leave it all up to the market. We do not need massive handouts to private industry; we need to actually take control of this transition with public oversight and ownership.

Madam President, I abstained on this motion because it’s the same old familiar dance: Hungary blackmails the Commission, the Commission blackmails Hungary. No doubt they’ll cause another dirty deal at some stage. And the Commission will trade away Hungarian minority rights and judicial independence, all for a few billion to backstop what they call their strategic interests in Ukraine. The rule of law is really just another weapon in the hands of this so-called geopolitical Commission. Of course there’s problems in Hungary and in many other areas as well, but this type of horse-trading certainly doesn’t help. But for the EU’s war zealots, the people who’ve staked their political careers on deterring peace in Ukraine, who cares? But reality is catching up with you. The United States is rapidly losing interest in the proxy war it provoked and maintained, just as it always does. Europe will be left picking up the pieces just like it always is. It’s not too late for Europe to play a constructive role in what comes next for Ukraine, but as long as Fra Genocide is at the helm, constructiveness is the last thing we can hope for.

Madam President, I voted against this resolution because what was initially a mealy-mouthed call for a ceasefire has been turned on its head thanks to the amendment put forward by the EPP and shamefully supported by five Irish MEPs. The text that was passed now calls for a ceasefire on precisely the same preconditions as Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded, dismantling Hamas and the unconditional release of hostages. Without that, the killing continues. This is Israel’s pretext for genocide, plain and simple, adopted by the European Parliament. For three months now, we have cheered on and provided cover for Israel as it has exterminated tens of thousands of children. And today the vote has voted to reject a call to halt the arms trade, a trade with these illegal settlements. It’s rejected the call to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, to use it as leverage, to end the violations, rejected supporting South Africa’s case, while sanctioning Iran and Qatar, but not Israel! This is utter lunacy, an absolute disgrace.

Madam President, there’s a lot that’s really good in this report, but I had to reluctantly abstain on it because it legitimises the use of spyware against journalists. Now the threat to media freedoms are deeply troubling, and we have to do a lot more, but we only ever talk about certain kinds of threats to media freedom. We never acknowledge the others – the hard limits that our politics and our culture puts on its freedom. Look at how our media has covered Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. If the media isn’t uncritically repeating Israel’s blatant lies, it is tying itself up in knots to avoid exposing them for what they are. It relentlessly downplays Israeli genocide, berates grieving Palestinians for not condemning Hamas enough. Israelis are ‘killed by bloodthirsty Palestinians’ while Israeli bullets ‘find their way into the heads’ of Palestinian children. Our media gives Israelis names; Palestinians are statistics. Seventy-five years of murder is wiped away; 7 October came from nowhere. Every journalist knows the rules of the game and they follow them. What kind of media freedom is this?

Madam President, global meat consumption has exploded since around 1961, with meat production quadrupling to meet this demand, and we’ve reached a situation where the meat on our plates can come directly from the other side of the world. Well, not my plate anyway, because I’m a vegetarian and I think I live longer and healthier as a result of it. But in any case, the publication of the Commission’s audits into the production of horsemeat in Argentina and Uruguay for export to the EU really illustrates the excess of contemporary capitalism and our way of consumption. No matter what the impact on the local populations or the environment, the demands of the European market are such that the rules will be circumvented. We see a situation of smuggling horses, administering medicines that don’t meet our standards, and very little regard for animal welfare. This isn’t the first audit to raise the alarm. The Commission seems to be going ahead, business as usual. This isn’t good enough.

Madam President, in the past few months, we’ve seen Palestinian solidarity decried as hate speech. We’ve seen claims of anti-Semitism being used to downplay the slaughter of innocents in Gaza and to cover up for the legitimate criticism of Zionism. And with all of this rage in the background, the EU decides to stomp onto the scene with plans to criminalise hate speech. The problem with that is: do we trust the EU to define hate speech? Do we trust them to ensure that it won’t be used to criminalise legitimate political speech and action? I have to say, I don’t. This has all the hallmarks of another clumsy and counterproductive neoliberal response to a social problem. It is cheaper to criminalise hate speech than to fund and focus on the strategies that might foster tolerance. It is a gimmick to allow politicians to pretend to care about minorities and racism and so on, while doing nothing to protect them, doing nothing to address the structural issues that lead to hate and intolerance in the first place, structural issues which include centrist politicians dog-whistling about migration. So for me, I think once again, I don’t trust von der Leyen’s Commission to police my speech.

Mr President, we sought to put this item on the agenda, because Norway is taking the world down a slippery slope to rip up the depths of the sea. And to make matters worse, they’re claiming they can do this environmentally destructive activity in a sustainable way. Now come on. What they’re actually doing is opening up an area the size of Italy to exploration for deep-sea mining, with the government inviting companies to bid for licences. This is the colonisation of the new frontier, the deep seas, where 90 % of the species present are unknown to humankind. It is some arrogance to say you can do this sustainably. We have a clear position on deep-sea mining. This House has repeatedly called for a moratorium because research tells us that too little is known about its real impacts. Extracting minerals from the deep ocean would have extremely serious consequences on our planetary systems, and do irreparable damage to marine ecosystems. We’ve got to be very clear: condemn this action now.

Madam President, so we’re here today celebrating the EU’s great role in preventive diplomacy. What an absolute joke! When the truth is that the EU has been seriously active not in preventive diplomacy, but in preventing diplomacy. We’ve had two years where the very concept of diplomacy has been smeared as a Russian plot. You’ve pulled out all the stops to smash the slightest chance of dialogue in Ukraine. Where was the preventive diplomacy in 2020 and 2021, when at least France and Germany tried to reduce the tensions with Russia? But the EU flung itself behind the US and NATO belligerence. And it’s the poor people of Ukraine with their smashed state who are living with the consequences of that. Meanwhile, 101 days into the genocide in Gaza and the EU hasn’t even managed to call for a ceasefire, while this report has the audacity to claim that the EU always seeks to reduce the risk of escalation. No, it doesn’t. You’re fooling nobody. It’s time to abandon rampant militarism and stop hurtling down the wrong road of history.

Madam President, according to Ursula von der Leyen, India and the EU are vibrant democracies that share fundamental values and common interests. We’re actually natural partners, or at least that’s what she told Narendra Modi while shaking his hand in New Delhi on one of the many occasions she’s met with him in the hopes of lining India up against China and Russia. This is the same Modi whose ultra nationalist BJP party has presided over intensifying ethnic tensions and genocidal massacres, and who was banned from the United States in 2002 by the Bush administration for his role in inciting the Gujarat pogrom, which saw hundreds of Muslim girls and women gang-raped and torn apart by marauding Hindu nationalists, children force-fed petrol and set on fire, and games of cricket with people’s skulls. That Modi – normalised for a decade by Trump, then Biden, and now our friend in Team Democracy, one big happy family that also contains Israel and Saudi Arabia. And you wonder why people in Ireland might have a problem in giving up our national foreign policy. You must be joking.

Mr President, despite the catastrophic death toll it has inflicted, Israel is losing – on the ground and in the court of public opinion. There is no way that this ends that doesn’t leave Israel a pariah state, with occupation and apartheid on borrowed time, and they know it. So they’re doing everything they can. Desperate acts of aggression to provoke a wider conflict with Lebanon, with Iran, with anybody – to draw in the US, to save them from the consequences of their own actions. As Yemen shows, Butcher Biden is reporting for duty. With Europe’s Frau Genocide by his side, they are the ones who have enabled the continuation of Israeli terror. Without them, it would already be over. So take note, Butcher Biden, the ancestors of the Ireland that you claim to be from disown you. Keep our country out of your mouth. As for von der Leyen and genocidal Germany, with your words and deeds supporting Israel in the ICJ, not in our name. The people of Europe stand with Palestine and with South Africa.

Mr President, there are, of course, some NGOs whose politics we may not like, whom we believe are stooges for vested interests, or dare to promote their own gravy train. But you don’t deal with that by trying to annihilate them – at least not if you claim to be a democrat. But that has been what this issue has been about, spearheaded by the EPP. Discipline people with politics you don’t like by choking their funding. Punish them by taking their money away. Blacklist them. Drive them underground and out of public life. It’s not about transparency or accountability, or indeed about concern for the use of public funds. It’s a political project against those who try to hold power to account. We need to recognise that for what it is, and I’m very glad that many in the Parliament have done so. It is of course important that EU funds which are given out to anyone, that there’s transparency and accountability and all of that good stuff. Of course it is. But those rules should apply to everyone – not just NGOs, big business – everyone. Robust rules for all.

Mr President, you can’t really go into a shop nowadays without everything you see being marketed as ‘climate neutral’. Whether it’s a pair of runners or a bunch of bananas, people are constantly bombarded by these generic claims, which actually don’t mean anything. We even have airlines selling ‘carbon-neutral’ flights. This has made a joke of the whole idea of conscious consumption and has lead shoppers into believing that they’re being codded, and they are, because generic environmental claims are inherently misleading, because they aren’t based on any standardised environmental performance. They’re often even specifically designed with a view to cod and intentionally fool the shoppers. So with this new legislation – and really thanks to the efforts of the Parliament – companies can no longer claim that their products are ‘climate neutral’, ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘green’. Carbon offsetting and calling them ‘carbon-neutral’ flights will also be outlawed. This is a really important step forward and fair play to the Parliament team for driving it forward.

Mr President, it’s almost the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine, a war that it is now openly acknowledged could have ended in the first few months if the West hadn’t vetoed the April 2022 peace deal. Instead, ye told Ukraine to fight on, and the result of that is hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians lost four provinces and any hope of independence ever again. Ukraine is trapped in an unwinnable stalemate, and the only way out is to painfully cut its losses. And rather than abandoning your lunacy in the midst of a crushing cost of living crisis brought on by your breathtaking stupidity, you want the citizens of Europe to cough up more fuel for the fire in military assistance. And you have the audacity to say that that is done to help Ukraine. The only people you’re helping are the shareholders in the arms companies. Now, your commitment to ongoing war might be unshakeable; don’t expect the citizens of Europe to follow suit. You sound like a bunch of deluded maniacs... (The President cut off the speaker)

Mr President, I think the title of this debate in some ways really sounds somewhat like a bit of a deluded fantasy when we all know that across Europe, social rights and workers’ conditions are under assault like never before, and public procurement, far from being the great leveller, is actually a contributing factor to this inequality. It’s legitimised theft on a phenomenal scale. It’s not only that jobs are priced on the basis of bleeding workers dry, but also the projects themselves end up costing phenomenally more than they should do. Contracts under EU rules mean driving out the small suppliers; the big boys move in, price the job too cheaply, and then add in clauses where they can ratchet up the costs later on. And as a result, as my colleague has said, we’ve a children’s hospital in Ireland which is about to become the most expensive in Europe, well over EUR 2 billion, a MetroLink project, 300 million without a track being laid. Is it any wonder that the results came out today, that 1 % of the population own a third of the wealth, while the working poor continue to slave on?

Madam President, I think that the creation of the European Labour Authority (ELA) in 2019, as we know, was intended to ensure that the EU rules on labour mobility and social security coordination would be applied fairly, simply and effectively. And while it’s still a relatively new organisation, I think we can say that that didn’t happen. And in some ways, it can’t really happen fully as long as neoliberalism remains as the dominant economic approach. I mean, you only have to look at sectors of our economy, such as aviation, where we know that the trade unions continue to be absolutely frustrated with the total inaction of the European Commission, which is systematically refusing to assume its responsibility in this area and instead hiding behind national authorities denouncing complex labour market systems involving undeclared work, bogus self-employment, abuse of subcontracting letterbox companies and so on. We need cross-border cooperation. We need a stronger ELA.

Madam President, every day now the mask falls further. On the very same day that the West's pet bulldog, Israel, was hauled into The Hague to face the charge of genocide in which EU countries are complicit, our so-called like minded partners, the US and Britain, flout the UN charter to commit their latest crime of aggression: illegal, unprovoked, unjustified airstrikes on Yemen, lawless barbarous acts to inflame the region and to make worse the catastrophic cost of living crisis being experienced by millions of Europeans. And now some of you actually want to join them! Seriously, with a straight face, people have come in here and said they want to do that in order to uphold international law – the very same international law that a horrified world has watched being trampled into the ruins of Gaza, while the EU hands Israel more weapons and cheers on the genocide. The Yemenis have killed no one and yet 25 000 Palestinians are dead, and all you're enraged about is international shipping! It's over. The EU has no moral authority. If you want to sort the situation out, end the genocide!