Speeches

Mr President, there are 1 million people homeless across Europe tonight, according to the Feantsa report. Millions more live in dilapidated, overcrowded accommodation. And of course – true to form – Ireland is one of the worst performers in that list. Fifteen years after the financial disaster of 2008, it’s time to start joining the dots. An entire generation has been systematically, deliberately, locked out of home ownership. For Europe’s young people, their future – whether they like it or not – is renting. It’s insecure, inadequate housing. It’s fattening the wallets of the investment megafunds that are buying up our cities. It’s watching the EU and governments connive to take us back to the 18th century. There isn’t a housing crisis. This is policy – policy to put the ownership into the hands of the 1%, and everyone else can rent or be homeless. It’s never been just about supply and demand. This is big finance, big business, stealing the ground from under our feet. But the people have begun to see through it and they will resist.

Mr President, so consumer credit is basically something which allows consumers to purchase goods and services that they don’t have the money for. We’re obviously updating the directive, and I welcome the positive elements which have been referred to by colleagues such as the right to be forgotten, such as improved access to solvency. But in some ways this is just like putting a plaster on a terminal disease – a disease that sees growing indebtedness across all European householders. We have the impoverishment and precariousness of the population. People need loans because they haven’t got enough money to meet their basic needs in many instances. 1.5 million people in Spain spend more than 40 % of their income on debt repayments. In Germany, they’re closing the doors of food banks to people. Last year, Eurostat reckoned that a fifth of the EU’s population were unable to heat their homes even before the last price increase. So we can’t just content ourselves with policies aimed at sustaining a system of debt where we need to address wages also.

Mr President, so, this is the latest revision of the Renewable Energy Directive – the establishment of common rules and targets for the development of renewable energy across all sectors of the economy. But I think we have to start by reminding ourselves of the urgent and radical action that we need to take this decade if we are to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and if Europe is to meet its obligations. Now, the lower-than-expected target for the EU share of renewable energy, and the inclusion of low-carbon fuels and non-renewable categories in the Renewable Energy Directive, really risks jeopardising Europe’s energy transition by withdrawing crucial resources and funds for the deployment of renewable energy. And, as colleagues have said, for the transport sector, the perpetuation of the false climate solution of biofuels is going to continue to waste land that could feed millions. We are making choices that are going to be fatal for the planet, and we need to do a lot better.

Madam President, after nine months of negotiations across multiple bodies in the wake of Qatargate, we’re finally getting to vote on the changes to the rules to reform the integrity, accountability and transparency of Parliament. And despite the fact that the text does see some improvements, and I very much welcome that, it’s not as ambitious as it should be or as people said it would be when this was in the headlights and all the high drama was ongoing last year. And the most glaring absence is the ban on MEPs being paid by law firms and consultancies and the like to do side work. Now, three times this Parliament voted to call for a ban on paid activity on behalf of entities covered by the Transparency Register. Despite the efforts of the EPP, Renew and the ECR in blocking this in committee, it was passed by Parliament in July, but it is not here. So where is it? How can we explain this absence? What kind of message does it send that after all the rhetoric and after all the resolutions we’re backtracking on this one?

Madam President, the so-called Emerald Isle of Ireland is not so green or clean anymore with the dirty secret, which is that our water quality is in dire straits. And, as the EPA recently confirmed, it’s actually not getting any better. Now, the big culprit for the pollution of our rivers and lakes is, of course, the increasing nitrate concentrations, runoffs from dairy farms is ruining our ground and surface water and it’s got to be addressed head on, as this is ultimately the source of our drinking water and many sectors of our society, including agriculture, rely on clean groundwater. Except the problem is that our government isn’t dealing with it. Actually, they’ve caused the problem by developing unsustainable dairy herds and refusing to support farmers in the transition away from it, instead relying on the continuation of derogations. This isn’t good enough. We need a transformation of our agricultural strategy. We need thresholds for pollutants to be scientifically established and a fair way of going forward. Agriculture and the environment are not opposites, they go hand in hand.

Madam President, so here we go again. The latest in a barrage of new defence splurges, on top of the billions we’re already blowing on military research and production, we now have another 350 million on military procurement. The priorities could not be clearer. There’s never enough money for health, for housing, for education or public services. Working people have to tighten their belts. But as the act shows once more, there’s always money in the bank for bombs and bullets. If it’s more shells and missiles and cluster munitions and depleted uranium, money’s no object. We can always come up with a couple of billion, so working class people over here can go over and kill working class people over there. Well, you’ll never have our consent for that. The security we demand is the security of a decent job and a place to live. The defence we want is a defence of our rights, even as those rights are attacked by the governments of Europe and even as you sign up to bankroll slaughter. We reject a Europe that robs from the poor to boost the profits of the arms industry. Militarisation is never the answer.

Mr President, I am glad we were discussing this SME resolution, but I abstained on it because we are not doing enough. The level playing field is not level enough. We have big business favoured every time – companies like Iceland, where presently, in Ireland, 400 Irish workers have been left with unpaid wages, holiday pay, redundancy pay, everything. Some of them are down thousands of euros against the backdrop of the biggest cost of living crisis in decades – no idea how they’re going to pay their bills or keep a roof over their head. And yet Iceland, as their employer, has conducted a tactical insolvency, yet another one. We’ve been told that this wouldn’t happen again, but it’s happening again and again. Our government says, ‘go to the industrial relations machinery of the state’. That’s an insult when they’ve have to wait two and three years. The moneylenders, the landlords, the bankers don’t wait for two and three years. They need action; they need it now. We need good employers and a level playing field.

Mr President, I also voted for this resolution. We hear an awful lot these days about the rules-based international order. Now, how European Member States deal with migration is a great example of this, because what it means is international law is flagrantly violated, UNCLOS disregarded. The Geneva Convention, maritime law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights: they’re all just bits of paper that can be discarded. And European Member States are allowed to get away with it. We’ve had no proactive state-operated search and rescue in the Mediterranean since 2014. Almost 28 000 people have died at sea in that time. That’s three times as many civilians as have lost their lives in Ukraine. But, of course, the people who’ve drowned in the Mediterranean don’t count – the men, the women, the children, the babies, who’ve struggled and gasped for breath, terrified as they die and lose their fight for life. They don’t matter, do they? We kill them with impunity. We deny we are at war with them through sanctions or migration. Until we acknowledge that, we’ll never get anywhere.

Mr President, I’m an Irish person so I’m a Catholic by birth, but I’m an atheist by choice. That said, I am a strong believer in support for religious freedoms – whatever that religion may be – and the right for anybody to practise and worship as they see fit, while at the same time supporting and backing the need to separate church from state. And I accept that Christians are persecuted. I have seen it in the likes of Syria where – because of Western interference to try and overthrow the Assad government, supporting ISIS and so on – Christians and, indeed, Shia Muslims have been undermined and attacked. I support the position of the European Union in its strong antisemitism statements, but I share the deep concerns of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last year about the dangerous rise in Islamophobia. We see Islamophobic rhetoric in public, in political discourse, and we see a growing stigmatisation of Muslims in Europe, which has contributed to legislation targeting them. It is not good enough. We need to address this.

Madam President, why is it that every irregularity in Venezuela, real or imagined, gets a debate and a resolution in here? But when the same thing actually happens in other countries, it barely registers. Two weeks ago, there was an election in Guatemala. The government had been shutting down newspapers, forcing judges into exile. Our own EU observation mission documented that opposition parties were arbitrarily blocked, bogus legal challenges from registering candidates limiting the field. Despite all of that, the people went to the polls and shock horror: they made sure that a social democrat got to the second round. So what happened? The old parties run to the supreme court, shout about anomalies, anomalies they didn’t happen to see on election day. This is a blatant derailment of an electoral process in a country with a long and bloody history of same. Why is it not on our agenda? Do the Guatemalans matter less than the Venezuelans? Or is the real agenda here, as in Venezuela, protecting all money and vested interests? I condemn the attacks on Guatemalan democracy. The next round on 20 August better proceed.

Madam President, it’s only seven months since the Qatargate scandal broke in Parliament. We had MEPs in jail, bags of cash seized, Brussels in uproar, everyone running around, screaming ‘enough is enough, no more messing around, we’re going to really make this place accountable this time’. Well, this was our chance to show the public that we’re serious. This report is supposed to be our main response to that scandal. But I have to say, from The Left’s point of view, while undoubtedly there are some very good elements in the report, overall it’s a disappointment. Most people would be expecting that this report would put the Qatar scandal front and centre. It’s there in the title, after all: transparency, integrity, accountability and anti-corruption. So it’s really weird when you open it and find out that it’s not so much about Qatar and corruption, but more about the usual favourite subjects – Russia, China, security threats, Reds under the beds, and all the usual stuff – where we should be talking about influence such as revolving doors. The report calls for safeguards against interference through revolving doors by high-risk non-EU countries. Why only high risk? Before December, most MEPs wouldn’t have even considered Qatar a high-risk country. If someone is interfering, surely that’s wrong, whoever they may be. Why do we qualify it? We couldn’t get an answer to that in the negotiations. It’s a double standard regarding corruption and interference. In February, we had two resolutions of this Parliament passed, calling for a ban on paid side jobs. Yet in negotiations we couldn’t achieve that. Now, in this report, all we have is stricter rules. What does that look like to people outside here? We’re watering down the commitment that we gave previously. It really isn’t good enough. Now we have an amendment – along with the Socialists and the Greens – to restore that ban. And I’m really appealing to colleagues to support Amendment 23 and restore the ban. We need high standards, not double standards.

Mr President, I think it is great to see this directive being discussed. Tax evasion and avoidance is a blight across Europe and, coming from Ireland as I do, that is absolutely the case where Ireland has been correctly labelled as a tax haven. But of course we are not on our own in that regard. I would like to highlight and recall the terrible plight of Michael Power from Waterford, the former Chief Financial Officer of Tcell, the mobile phone operator in Tajikistan, 60% owned by Telia, largely owned by the Swedish State. This company was previously involved in tax corruption in Uzbekistan and when Power exposed to them serious tax fraud and bribery in their organisation, as he was legally obliged to do, he was victimised, threatened and dismissed. Protected disclosure legislation is supposed to out wrongdoing in the public interest. But for Michael Power, the legal process is being used to subvert his protected disclosure. He is locked in procedural legal matters. If we want to deal with tax evasion, we have to protect people and protected disclosures.

Mr President, for all of the bravado about the vibrant European industry, the Chips Act actually is just another example of Europe’s scrambling to respond to unilateral US moves to protect its interests – something the US always does with zero care for the consequences of anybody else. And the irony, of course, is that of all of those US-dominated multilateral institutions – the WTO, the World Bank and so on – is that even dominance is not enough for them. They want everybody else to submit their rules while they do whatever they like, thanks very much. It’s their world and we’re just lucky to live in it. That’s the rules-based international order. They break the rules, and what are we going to do about it? Well, in Europe’s case, we don’t even pretend to try and do anything about it anymore. We sheepishly submit to ‘his master’s voice’, lob a few billion subsidies at European capitalists to keep them quiet, and hope that the public money does not run out before the US ends and stops its mad quest to shove China into a box and lock it there. Because that is not going to happen. And it’s about time Europe got itself out from under the coat-tails of our misnamed like-minded partner.

Mr President, since the start of the war in Ukraine, the EIB has mobilised and disbursed about EUR 1.7 billion in emergency relief to Ukraine. And I think it’s appropriate that the report considers the very difficult situation that Ukraine is in now – with very limited resources to properly audit those monies – and calls instead on the EIB to do more to monitor the implementation of where that money is going. And that’s particularly important in the context of the report that our own European Court of Auditors did prior to the war about the systemic and deep levels of corruption in Ukrainian society. It’s particularly important when we look at the reports about sanctions being used to oust rivals in that society and military equipment appearing for sale on the dark web. Now, of course, militarism is exceptionally dangerous – which is why it was always excluded from the EIB’s portfolio – but now we’re using dual use to circumvent that and send across EUR 6 billion to the military industrial complex. The report calls for more partnership with NATO. This is lunacy. The bank should go back to the job it was supposed to do.

Madam President, on Palestine, EU politics takes place in a sort of a never-never land where things can be both true and untrue at the same time. We skirt around the details of a reality. We refuse to accurately name Zionism as practised as a European settler colonial project. Israel is an occupying power; Palestinians are a colonised people. The division of the West Bank, the checkpoints, the separate control regimes, the settlements and annexations, the systemic denial of rights: these are the crimes of apartheid. Israeli air strikes on Gaza in May: 33 dead, hundreds wounded. This isn’t self-defence, it’s a war crime. The slaughter of children from the air in Jenin: not self-defence. War crimes, illegal, without any comment out of the European Union, while the Commission President toasts the birthday of Israel’s occupation of Palestine as the realisation of a dream. Palestinians have a right to engage in resistance. Our duty under international law is to use diplomatic means to bring about an end to the intolerable conditions they live under. But until we stop rewarding Israel, they’ll keep doing it.

Madam President, so we have a new package published by the Commission less than a year before the end of the mandate and we’re expected to believe that it’s finally going to be possible to transfer road traffic to rail with the resulting reduction in emissions. I mean, come on. We have to look at the 10 years up to 2021 where we’ve actually seen rail’s share of total freight transport decreasing in 16 of the Member States that have railways, while road freight transport has increased by 1.7%. Now we know that freight transport is continuing to grow, expected to increase by about 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. And we know the constraints that are on our roads with the shortage of drivers and so on. But rail transport has deep developmental constraints, partly as a result of European and national policies that have underinvested for decades. Not least, we have to reverse the approach and see rail as a public asset requiring public investment, while rail freight should be recognised as a service of public interest, which is completely against the neoliberal privatised model that so many of our Member States have adopted.

Madam President, the Commission’s rule of law report flags the reform of the TV licence in Ireland as something that’s ongoing. Well it’s ongoing, alright, for the past decade with absolutely no results. But not anymore. As we sit here, the country is in uproar. We’re in the midst of emergency sessions of parliament against the weeks of revelations about a staggering culture of excess at our national broadcaster, RTÉ. Five thousand euros spent on flip-flops for a party. Concerts, dinners, private members’ clubs, open chequebooks for VIP hospitality while journalists work out of café toilets, EUR 150 000 secretly funnelled for a star celebrity, while everyone else has to tighten their belts. Well, the public is furious and rightly so. When we agree to fund our public broadcaster, we don’t sign up for a slush fund to pay the lives of the rich in their parties. Is that any wonder that this institution toes the line of government so the party can continue? It is about time the Irish Government dumped the licence, continued to argue and changed the system for proper public service journalism, and RTÉ should be committed to delivering that. The pantomime is rolling on in Ireland, but the government really needs to fix it and the Commission really needs to keep a better eye on them.

Mr President, so what did we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic? Well, we learned that we can move mountains when we need to. We can restructure our entire economies and societies in the face of a crisis. So we know now that when we don’t do that for housing and climate change, it’s not because we can’t, it’s because we choose not to. We learned that Europe’s powers that be in a crisis will approach the issue in pretty much their usual arrogance and disdain for the public in the process, leading to a massive crisis in public trust, in the scientific and medical expertise by failing to allow rational debate on the facts to alleviate the genuine concerns of citizens. And of course, crucially, we learned that the profits of the private pharmaceutical companies will reign supreme over the health of billions worldwide as patents are protected and secret information redacted. So it’s very clear, the real lesson is we need public medicine to protect public health, good public information free from interference.

Madam President, what should have been a discussion about a far more ambitious programme than what we have here if we are to save the planet and nature has turned into really one of the crassest campaigns of disinformation by opportunist politicians and a media completely incapable of holding them to account. Members on all sides have been using it to play to their own audience, and I have to say I find it utterly demoralising. Why is this issue decisive? It is understandable, of course, that people would be annoyed with an arrogant Commission and with the botch jobs on previous EU regulations, but that’s not a reason for misrepresenting this one. Everyone wants an end to the devastating yearly droughts and floods. Everybody wants consultation, predictable incomes. They want to keep traditions alive. They want to be financially rewarded for going the extra mile. They want to have a future to look to with bees and bogs and everything in between. We can have that with this law. There can be a just transition. There’s no good reason to vote against it.

Madam President, I know we heard from the Commissioner that the Commission is listening. But if you are, I wonder, are you really hearing? Because we know that the Commission and the European Chemicals Agency are still standing over animal testing under the REACH Regulation for chemicals used exclusively in cosmetics, for which there is a possibility of workforce exposure or a risk to the environment. Now, this is a double standard and a joke. As colleagues have said, the European Union lauded the fact that we became a world leader 10 years ago in banning cosmetics products being tested on animals. It is time for us to stop the double standards now. It is beyond time for us to respect the demand of the 1.2 million citizens who are demanding a legally binding act to end animal testing for cosmetic products and ingredients under REACH, including the safety of workers, and to put an end to the serious legal inconsistency that has been going on over the past period. As colleagues have said, there are alternatives. We need to commit to a Europe without animal testing, and I really hope that the Commission comes up with a roadmap for that.

Mr President, I think it is really appropriate that we are talking about the protection of journalists from abuse of court proceedings. But I think we have to be honest about it that it doesn’t really get much more abusive than depriving somebody of their liberty. In that sense, I think it was very appropriate for people to refer to journalists like Julian Assange, seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, four years in a high security prison in Belmarsh in England, for having the audacity to hold US empire to account, outing the war crimes committed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while criminals who caused that war, like Bush and Blair, walk free, Julian Assange is currently awaiting judgment any day now, which could see him extradited to the US, where his life will be in grave danger. What about Pablo Gonzalez? Basque journalist, 16 months in a Polish jail without a charge, extended pre—trial detention, not a single phone call with his family, limited visits. This is absolutely scandalous. If it was happening in Belarus and Iran, we’d be shouting and roaring about it. It is time to do something about these cases.

Madam President, the Industrial Emissions Directive is obviously aiming to overhaul the management of emissions from over 50 000 areas, including steelworks, chemical and plastics, coal factories and, of course, industrial farms. This is important to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from the point of view of the impact on the environment, but not just that, also the impact on human health. Every year, air pollution causes 300 000 premature deaths in Europe. The air and water pollution caused by intensive livestock farming is well documented. The health and environmental costs of water pollution due to excess nitrogen and phosphorus amounts to 22 billion a year. But critically, we see that Europe, with less than 10% of the world’s population, is accounting for 23% of new cancer cases linked to pollution. Now, there had been a right to compensation introduced in this directive, but it was absolutely weakened down in negotiations. I think that’s really regrettable. It puts profits over people’s health. We need to put that back.

Mr President, of course I believe that the European Union must contribute to Ukraine’s reconstruction, but I had to vote against this resolution because practically every single thing in it about Ukraine and European security is wrong. It trumpets the 2008 Bucharest decision that Ukraine will join NATO, a decision which was warned could lead to a war, which it has. It pushes to integrate Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic community, the very circumstances which caused the civil war in 2014, because, of course, while some Ukrainians want this, others don’t. And this resolution just doubles down on all of this. And even if Ukraine won back all of its territory, this plan would leave the country permanently divided and unstable. It talks about securing peace by expanding NATO – seriously? NATO, the instrument of US empire in the post-Cold War period, the arms industries pimp, NATO, which makes more war more likely everywhere. The only viable peace in Europe is a different security setup in which the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of all is guaranteed.

Mr President, this was a very good report. It pointed out and was clear that Pegasus hacking and spyware is an attack on democracy and human rights. It’s sensitive to the power imbalance between those carrying out surveillance and those under it. It denounces stockpiling of zero day exploits. It does not spare EU Member States. It calls out Ireland for playing host to the cyber arms trade. And it is unequivocal that Israel is the global hub for spy companies. But I had to abstain because it does not ban this spyware outright. The problem is bigger than spyware. There’s a nexus between it, state hacking, disinformation and electoral interference. Israel leads the world in all the dark arts. The Foreign Interference Committee heard from experts recently that Israel is a global disinformation epicentre where the companies operate on the basis that as long as you don’t meddle in Israel, the US or Russia, you can do what you like. And yet we call Israel our friend. Unless there’s consequences, this will keep happening. We need to change the relationships between the EU and Israel.

Madam President, Bernard Phelan, an Irish citizen, was released from Iran in the last weeks, and that is very much to be welcomed. It was, of course, a product of diplomacy by Irish state services, but also by Iranian diplomats. And diplomacy by national Member States is the way in which we deal with this. To listen to some colleagues, you would think they want to ape the American model, which is: ‘We don’t pay for hostages’. Which means that people end up getting dead, or their families go into debt secretly paying the hostages by taking out massive loans. Now, the real question here is: why does this happen? Countries that we will not allow to have normal relations with us resort to abnormal tactics in return. That does not make it right, but it does help to explain it. We have had the exclusion of Iran from many different situations. The consequences of the sanctions, felt throughout Iranian society, are deep and painful. If we want to treat countries with respect, we have to treat them as equals, and diplomacy is the only way to resolve matters.