What Billy spoke about.

19 Oct

2021

EN Speech

General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2022 - all sections (debate)

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Madam President, I welcome the fact that this House is very committed to providing a budget that addresses the major issues and challenges facing us in terms of the COVID pandemic and the need to have resilience built into the economies in the years ahead. I was very disappointed with the Council’s decision, of course, to pare back on some of the key most important issues like innovation research,…

6 Oct

2021

EN Speech

Pandora Papers: implications on the efforts to combat money laundering, tax evasion and avoidance (debate)

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Madam President, the Pandora Papers leak had 12 million documents, exposing quite clearly that there is continual tax evasion, money laundering of ill—gotten gains. And it is at the highest levels, and unfortunately, we have situations where we have Prime Ministers that sit on the Council, who are now being identified as people who are using letterbox companies and other nefarious means to avoid p…

5 Oct

2021

EN Speech

The future of EU-US relations (debate)

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Mr President, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this particular issue and I point out that there are strong historical bonds between many European nations and the United States of America, so the transatlantic alliance is significant and very important for many reasons. Of course, we should also be mindful of the fact that we do not always agree. Ireland is a small nation, it doesn’t always ag…

16 Sep

2021

GA Speech

United States sanctions and the Rule of law (continuation of debate)

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Mr President, the European Union is often very quick to launch investigations or reports on corruption or wrongdoing in third countries. That is a very positive thing. However, the EU is often extremely slow to investigate illegal and corrupt behaviour in one of its Member States. We are deeply concerned that the United States seems to have acted faster than we did on corruption allegations in Bul…

15 Sep

2021

EN Speech

Reversing the negative social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic (debate)

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Mr President, there will obviously be many negative social consequences because of the COVID-19 pandemic – mental health issues in young and old, the loss of life and the inability to grieve is a very significant issue, family separation, education of our children in their formative years and the loss of those social contacts, and the pressure on our health services. Of course, all of these issues…

15 Sep

2021

EN Speech

Implementation of EU requirements for exchange of tax information (debate)

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Madam President, I welcome the overall content of the report, and trust the report in highlighting the deficiencies that are still clearly there in terms of oversight and information sharing between tax administrations across the European Union. We do need to have that flow of information, either be it publicly or confidentially between the various administrations, to root out tax evasion, tax avo…

14 Sep

2021

EN Speech

Brexit Adjustment Reserve - Draft amending budget No 1/2021: Brexit Adjustment Reserve (debate)

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Mr President, I very much welcome the agreement that has been finally reached. There is no doubt it was a long, tough process, but I think most sides can be happy. Brexit isn’t a good idea. It is bringing about economic and social consequences across a lot of Europe, but in my country, it is also bringing about potential political consequences. Beyond that, I do welcome the fact that Europe has sh…

7 Jul

2021

GA Speech

Review of the macroeconomic legislative framework (debate)

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Mr President, when calculating the economic cost of the Covid-19 pandemic, the European Parliament should take a strong and ambitious position on the review of the economic governance framework. EU and member state governments have worked hard to help our collective economy. However, we need to make sure that this financial support is withdrawn smoothly and carefully. We must continue the strong s…

7 Jul

2021

EN Speech

State of play of the implementation of the EU Digital COVID Certificate regulations (debate)

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Mr President, the fact that 200 million European citizens have downloaded the Digital COVID Certificate shows the importance of this concept that was conceived in this particular House and is now implemented by the Commission. But we have to ensure now that Member States embrace the concept, that they use the concept of uniformity, of bestowing rights on all European citizens. I would be very conc…