What Barry spoke about.

9

Jun

2022

GA Speech

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A new trade instrument to ban products made by forced labour (debate)

Mr. President, Mr. President, I will be speaking Irish. With the alarming images and documents issued in the Xinjiang Police Files, the continued inactivity of the European Union can no longer be accepted. We can at least guarantee our citizens that they will not be complicit in this abuse by purchasing products from forced labour without their knowledge. But we are not alone in making these promi…

9

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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The call for a Convention for the revision of the Treaties (debate)

Mr President, Vice-President, Minister, in 2021 the Irish Government originally co-signed a letter with 11 other Member States opposing Treaty change that might arise from the Conference on the Future of Europe. The idea that a bottom up, citizen-led exercise in participatory democracy would be pre-emptively rejected by 12 Member States seemed tone—deaf to me. The letter said, and I quote, ‘it sho…

19

May

2022

EN Speech

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The fight against impunity for war crimes in Ukraine (debate)

Mr President, once again, I’m calling on the Commission to act on the call from this Parliament for an EU action plan on impunity. It was called for in a resolution this time last year in the context of a resolution on Syria, and nothing has happened since. It is critically important, for the very obvious reason demonstrated by the Caesar trials in Koblenz, that each EU Member State takes a very d…

18

May

2022

EN Speech

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One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Madam President, the stigma around breaking the law has been significantly eroded by the UK Government. It’s not just the personal behaviour of the Prime Minister himself or his very loose grasp of the truth, and it’s not just the breach of so many constitutional norms – like the prorogation of parliament and the multiple events being dragged through court – it is, of course, the way that they hav…

5

May

2022

EN Speech

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The impact of the war against Ukraine on women (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, this morning we’ve heard some of the unspeakable horrors that have been visited on the women and children of Ukraine. The task I want to concentrate on is how we convert evidence into prosecutions. This time last year, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for the Commission to publish an action plan on impunity. Nothing has happened since then, and it …

2

May

2022

EN Speech

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One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Mr President, yesterday, a Russian state TV simulated a nuclear attack on Ireland and the UK. I don’t want to overstate the nuclear threat, but there is no doubt that the stigma against the use of nuclear weapons in war has been significantly eroded in recent years. And I believe it is time to create a pathway to a world without nuclear weapons. Next month, the signatories of the Treaty on the Pro…

5

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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Situation in Afghanistan, in particular the situation of women’s rights (debate)

Madam President, the women and girls of Afghanistan wonder if they will ever complete their education. The Taliban alone are responsible for this tragedy and intensified diplomacy is now necessary. But these girls might also ask, and I’ve heard them ask this question: why are you starving us to protect our human rights? Twenty-two million Afghans are acutely food insecure. Famine is on the horizon…

5

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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EU Protection of children and young people fleeing the war against Ukraine (debate)

Mr President, it’s difficult to add something new at the end of a debate, but I want to add my voice of shock at the evidence of war crimes that we’ve seen over the weekend, and that had been very articulately expressed by so many colleagues. I want to raise one issue, which is the criticism of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is triggered by the decision by Peter Moore t…

23

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Madam President, one year ago, together with other MEPs, I proposed a joint motion for a resolution on the 10th anniversary of the uprising in Syria. In it we called on the Commission to prepare an action plan on impunity to include a specific chapter on Syria. Unfortunately, so far nothing has been done, despite the request being the central plank of a resolution that enjoyed cross-party support.…

23

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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Need for an urgent EU action plan to ensure food security inside and outside the EU in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (debate)

Madam President, the issue of food security is the reason why Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is on the verge of becoming the most disastrous geopolitical moment in modern history. A group of states already on the edge of famine are totally dependent on Ukraine and Russian exports. Even for the more commercially independent, the rise in global energy and food prices will push citizens over the edge. W…

15

Feb

2022

EN Speech

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Human rights and democracy in the world – annual report 2021 (continuation of debate)

Mr President, 60 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved, and it set out 30 freedoms that we should all enjoy – freedom of expression, freedom from torture, the right to equal protection before the law. But last week, the Economist Intelligence Unit noted in its annual report that just 6 % of the world’s population live in full democracy. And last year, Freedom House note…

14

Feb

2022

EN Speech

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One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Madam President, the women of Afghanistan are asking the question, ‘Why are you starving us and our daughters in the name of women’s rights?’. This is because this is not a humanitarian crisis caused by conflict or by climate or by a natural disaster, as David Miliband told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, this is a catastrophe of choice. It is as if it was designed by the western…

14

Dec

2021

EN Speech

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Outcome of Global Summit Nutrition for Growth (Japan, 7-8 December) and increased food insecurity in developing countries (debate)

Mr President, nutrition is the basis of life and a precondition for the development of societies. Good nutrition, as we know, is an accelerator of all the Sustainable Development Goals and determines an individual’s health, the effectiveness of education, a person’s ability to find decent work, to innovate and to take care of one’s environment. Malnutrition is not only the opposite of development,…

14

Dec

2021

EN Speech

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New orientations for the EU’s humanitarian action (debate)

Mr President, first of all I’d like to acknowledge the work of Mr Neuser, not just in this report, but in his contribution to this House over the last decade. His report, I think, is part of an appropriate period of reflection and response, which follows each successive humanitarian crisis. It’s happened over the last 15 years, whether it is the cluster system and the CERF that followed the situat…

25

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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The human rights situation in Cameroon

Madam President, two weeks ago, seven year old Brandy Tartaw was shot and killed by a police officer while walking home from school in Bamenda, a city in northwest Cameroon. Brandy is just one of thousands of young girls who are the utterly innocent victims of the armed conflict in Cameroon over the past five years. The forced school boycott in the Anglophone regions has exposed children to child …

24

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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The EU's role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic: how to vaccinate the world (continuation of debate)

Madam President, earlier I heard an PPE speaker say that it would take two years before developing countries could reach the production capacity necessary to justify the TRIPS waiver – the speaker obviously forgetting that the application was made 14 months ago and that had we had the foresight to grant the TRIPS waiver 14 months ago, we would be on the brink of achieving the production capacity t…

23

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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Multilateral negotiations in view of the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva, 30 November to 3 December 2021 (debate)

Madam President, a question that I’m often asked is how and whether we can balance and reconcile our ambitions around the environment and our trade priorities. How can we create jobs and prosperity and avoid environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity? In our resolution, we try to establish a very clear link between the multilateral trading system, on the one hand, and achieving the Sustain…

22

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Madam President, I wanted to speak on the huge increase in the number of people being arbitrarily detained in Libya since the beginning of October, described by the UN as potentially a crime against humanity. However, this evening, the Guardian newspaper reports that at least 75 people are feared drowned off the coast of Libya in one of the most shocking incidents so far in the Mediterranean. We m…

11

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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The outcome of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) (debate)

Madam President, I very much welcome the first meeting of the Trade and Technology Council, which took place in September – something that would have been inconceivable under the previous American administration. I certainly welcome the first statement of the Council, which emphasised the importance of workers on both sides of the Atlantic, on shared values and also on SMEs and the working groups …

10

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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The escalating humanitarian crisis on the EU-Belarusian border, in particular in Poland (debate)

Mr President, in 2017, Tom Wright of the Brookings Institution wrote a book, the title of which is very appropriate for the debate that we are having today. It was called All Measures Short of War. What we are seeing on the Polish—Belarus border is a classic example of hybrid warfare. But we are vulnerable to this type of hybrid warfare because we do not have in place a legislative programme for s…

20

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the UK (COP26) (continuation of debate)

Mr President, like a lot of other speakers, I recognise the importance of COP26, but I am not optimistic about the outcome. On the one hand, we have so many governments who know the right thing to do but don’t know how to turn that to electoral advantage. On the other hand, as was said in France in 2017, there are millions of people for whom the end of the world is far less a pressing issue than t…

5

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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Disinformation and the role of social platforms (debate)

Madam President, democratic backsliding is at a crisis point, as Freedom House has pointed out. According to their democracy index, 2020 is the 16th consecutive year of the decline in global freedom. It is astonishing to record that less than 20% of people across the globe live in free countries in 2021. Commissioner Breton, as you yourself said, ‘Reforming the digital space is a matter of surviva…

5

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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State of EU cyber defence capabilities (debate)

Madam President, the picture could not be any clearer. For state actors hostile to the EU, like Russia, the cost of attack is infinitesimally smaller than the rewards, and that has to change. For critical entities across the EU, including the Irish Health Service, the cost of doing nothing except repair and remediation was much less than the cost of adequate protection, and that has to change too.…

4

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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The role of development policy in the response to biodiversity loss in developing countries, in the context of the achievement of the 2030 Agenda (debate)

Mr President, first of all, I would like to thank Commissioner Urpilainen for her assistance in the launch of the SDG Alliance here in Parliament two weeks ago. I very much welcome the many references to the SDGs in Ms Rivasi’s report and to Agenda 2030. It is very clear that the only way we will achieve policy coherence for sustainable development is if we can marshal the facts, if we have the da…

15

Sep

2021

EN Speech

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EU contribution to transforming global food systems to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, 690 million people are chronically hungry today, and hunger has increased every year since 2015, when the SDGs were announced as a pathway to zero hunger. And yet one third of the food we produce is never eaten, and our diets are a major contribution to environmental damage and to loss of biodiversity. Our food system is broken. We have to change the way …