Richard Boyd Barrett
Dún Laoghaire · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“It is absolutely incredible that about 50% to 57% of all professional artists in this country live on or below the poverty line - three times the level of poverty in Irish society generally.”
“On a global level, the consumption of electricity by data centres is due to go up elevenfold by 2030. They are hoovering up the water resources and electricity resources of the planet. There will not be much human creativity, art or music if we have no water and no energy. That is what is going on with these people.”
“St. Joseph's Centre in Shankill is the largest care home dedicated solely to dementia care in the country. SIPTU members feel compelled to take industrial action tomorrow because of the failure of St. John of God's to recognise the work and duties that they do.”
“These people actually want to replace human beings and human creativity with AI. That would literally be the road to disaster for humanity. Some people think about AI as if it is cutting edge and the most advanced thing possible, but AI is like the Neanderthal.”
“Against that background, we are seeing these billionaires who run AI looking to steal en masse all of the artistic and creative output of humanity and to profit from it. The artists rightly are asking what the Government is going to do to prevent them making a bad situation for most artists and performers even worse.”
“I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for bringing this motion forward. As Deputy Paul Murphy indicated, People Before Profit is very happy to support and commend all the artists, organisations, musicians and so on who are campaigning to bring this forward.”
The complete record
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“I was reading an article I was sent by Donal O'Keeffe in The Echo about the fact in 1947 the State’s Chief Medical Officer’s papers have revealed a threatened investigation by the State into 700 deaths at the time in Bessborough was abandoned if there was a commitment to reduce the number of deaths of children to single digits. It is horrendous what was going on. They did not investigate at the time and the deaths continued, though they reduced. The dark stain we are talking about on the history of this State is due to its treatment of women and children, its stigmatisation of women because they did not comply with a twisted notion of morality and then the actual deaths of children, the burial place of hundreds of whom remain unaccounted for. It is unbelievable.”
“Connolly was very consciously an advocate for women's liberation and believed that if the Irish struggle for freedom did not liberate women it would be a hollow victory. When he was warning about the carnival or reaction that would result from partition, he was very specifically worried about what would happen to women in a partitioned Ireland where reactionary forces gained dominance in the State. It is appropriate then that Bessborough was set up in 1922 - the year of partition - as part of a policy by the new State of outsourcing the care of women and children to the Catholic Church which then ran institutions where, in one year, three out of four children died, many of them of starvation.”
“I pay tribute to Carmel Cantwell, Noelle Brown who I see in the Gallery, and other survivors and those affected by the crimes committed at Bessborough Mother and Baby Institution. I called it a "home" at the protest last week and I was rightly rounded upon and told it should be called an institution because these were institutions of brutality and oppression that traumatised, stigmatised and brutalised women, and of course led to the deaths of 923 children. It is a horrific stain. Over the next few weeks we will be celebrating the Irish revolution - the 1916 Rising. One of the greatest - and in my opinion the greatest - Irish revolutionary, whose bust is behind us, was James Connolly. He was a revolutionary as well as a socialist and warned that if the country was partitioned it would lead to a "carnival or reaction" North and South.”
“We should remember that history and heritage and show it some respect, along with showing respect for the ordinary people who are being crushed by this cost-of-living crisis.”
“The Government will not even call out the people who are choosing to make it worse, like Trump and the Israeli regime. It is fairly obvious to me. The double standards are clear. We cuddle up to the warmongers and the psychopaths. We refuse to sanction or condemn them. We grovel before them with shamrock and let their troops go through Shannon Airport. Might these people use a nuclear weapon if things do not go well for them? Some of them would. Some of the Republican senators who support Trump are actually suggesting the use of nuclear weapons. That is just how mad these people are. At what point do we call a stop to this madness and stand up to assert this country's noble tradition of opposition to empire? This country's struggle for freedom started with a struggle against empire, colonialism and the First World War.”
“Has that been done anywhere else? It has been done in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Croatia. Forms of price control have been introduced in Spain and I think that has also been done in Italy. It can be done. The prices of these goods can be controlled to give security to people. How do you pay for that? Just look at the profits that are being made. We should put a bit of a levy on the profits of the data centres, which are sucking up all of the electricity, or on the record €300 billion that was made in corporate profits last year. In fact, it was more than €300 billion. Profits have gone up by 200% to 300% over the past decade while ordinary people are being absolutely crucified. The Government will not do that, however. It is okay for those companies to profiteer while ordinary people suffer with this cost-of-living crisis.”
“In all of that time, the profits of the energy companies of this country have gone through the roof. They have gone up and up. ESB profits, Energia profits and Bord Gáis profits have all gone up and up. People are speculating on oil and all of that kind of thing and they are all making profits at the expense of ordinary people who are suffering cost-of-living misery and who are unable to turn on the heating. Some 700,000 people in this country are living in poverty. They are living in poverty in one of the richest countries in the world. Despite all this, this is the best the Government can do. The Government can do other things but refuses to do so. I honestly do not understand why unless it is because, as Deputy Murphy said, that the Government is not willing to stand up to these corporations. It can introduce price controls.”
“People are getting rich out of it while all this cost-of-living misery has been going on since 2021. We are not Johnny-come-lately when it comes to addressing the very issues we are discussing. I have been looking back at our motion, which was the first motion on the cost of living to come before this House at the beginning of the cost-of-living crisis. We moved it on 6 October 2021. It referred to the need for price controls on electricity, fuel, petrol and home heating oil. It also referred to the need to boost the retrofitting of homes so that people could bring down their bills. It mentioned the cost of disability and addressing the poverty crisis that exists in this country and the number of people in energy poverty. Six years later, we are still dealing with the same issues. They have just got worse.”
“I know how forceful the Minister of State has been about Russia's illegal war in Ukraine. Imagine anybody suggesting that a representative of this country should go and give shamrock to Vladimir Putin, or to meet him at all, and say nothing about what he is doing in Ukraine and allow his troops to go through Shannon Airport. There would be outrage, yet the Government quietly allow US troops go through Shannon Airport while Trump and these psychopaths in the White House and in the Israeli regime continue these crimes. People here are suffering for those crimes, yet the Government continues to take no action whatsoever. It then throws back this pittance, 2 cent on the litre. It is absolutely pathetic. It is an insult. Of course, people, Trump's friends, are speculating on all of this.”
“By the way, the genocidal campaign against the Palestinians continues, including in the West Bank, and is being expanded into the ethnic cleansing of Lebanon, the explicit plan to occupy another country's territory, southern Lebanon, and waging a criminal war against Iran, which has now inflamed the entire Middle East and which is costing every single person in this country to the extent that some people cannot turn on the heating. Despite this, the Government cannot condemn it. It is not only that but it is also facilitating US troops, the people who are doing this to our people, at Shannon Airport. Never mind raining death and destruction on people in the Middle East and setting the world on fire, they are immiserating people here and yet these troops are going through Shannon Airport.”
“There is now another reason to pass the Bill, which is that people in this country cannot pay their bills because of what these psychopaths are doing. We still treat them as normal states. Has the Minister of State ever seen anything like Trump boasting about the murder of people? Whatever we might think about the Iranian regime, boasting and saying you will kill them all is the behaviour of a psychopath. If you wanted to define "psychopath", that is a psychopath and he is running the most powerful government in the world and collaborating with a regime that is in the dock for genocide.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people in this country are being impoverished and having hardship imposed on them because of the deranged lunatic in the White House, Donald Trump, and the psychopaths who run the Israeli regime and their bloodlust and warmongering. People in this country cannot pay their bills, cannot turn on their heating and, in some cases, cannot travel when they have disabilities because of the mad dog, Trump, and because of Netanyahu and the Israeli regime. Despite this, our Government still cannot condemn what Trump is doing. It cannot impose sanctions on the regime in Israel he is doing it with. As we speak, there are people outside asking where is the occupied territories Bill to impose sanctions on Israel for its illegal occupation and its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.”
“Senior radiation therapists should be on a senior pay scale. A lot of the people who are qualified in this area are leaving the country because they do not have comparable pay rates to people in other parts of the country. We also have a problem that out of the eight PET scanners in this country, only one is fully publicly funded and one is partially funded. They are in private hands. The only place that the stuff that goes into PET CT scanners is made is Blackrock Clinic, a private clinic, which is ridiculous. There should not be that level of privatisation of the means to produce PET scanners and the equipment because it raises questions about equality of treatment when dealing with cancer. There are many more things that I could say but I am out of time. Hopefully, the Government is listening.”
“We need to resource that on a multi-annual basis, so there is certainty. We need to have equipment replacement programmes. It has already been referred to. The age of the linear accelerators is ridiculous. The vast majority of them are way past their sell-by date. That makes a big difference. One of the things a patient is affected by when getting treatment is the collateral damage of the treatment in terms of the side effects, but the newer the machinery and the more precise the treatment is, the better it is for dealing with the cancer and it lessens the impact of the side effects. This makes a real difference to the quality of life of people who get the treatment and to the precision of the treatment. We need to have that properly organised national equipment replacement scheme rather than it being done on an ad hoc basis.”
“In more rural parts of the country, in particular, it can be very different. I would not like having to travel. I was lucky in that regard. I went to St. Luke's. I am well paid, so it does not matter so much, but in St. Luke's patients do not have to pay for parking. In St. Vincent's, there is a parking charge, and it is quite a lot. It is crazy to put financial obstacles in the way of people when they are in this sort of situation. There are other financial obstacles to accessing services, such as if a person does not have a medical card they still have to pay. The amount of money that they have to pay is significant for some people. We should not place financial obstacles in the way of people when they are in this sort of situation. I agree with the motion. We need a cancer strategy for the next ten years.”
“Given that 50% of the population will have a scrape with cancer, it is important to know that it is not a death sentence as maybe going back not so long ago it was seen as such. The treatment is advancing all the time if, ideally, we catch it early or it gets treated. If we invest and resource the people who work in this area properly, support them, the research necessary, the equipment necessary and the capacity and resources, then we can save a lot of lives. I am certainly a major beneficiary of that. I am not quite sure why the Government has put down an amendment to Sinn Féin's motion because it could certainly add things to it. Sinn Féin's motion is very reasonable in saying that, of course, there should not be a postcode lottery. I have had a very good experience. It varies around the country.”
“I thank Deputy Cullinane and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this very important motion on cancer services, which I am very happy to support. It is more or less a year since I started my cancer treatment for throat cancer. The most important thing I wish to say is how grateful I am to all of those who work in cancer services, from the doctors and nurses to the radiotherapists and nutritionists, from the orderlies and porters to the receptionists and the people who research in the area of cancer and help to develop the treatments - all these huge numbers of people. There are a lot more that I am probably not mentioning. Without them, I might not be standing here, or I might be facing a bleak future, but instead the treatment was successful. It was thanks to those amazing people and all the work they did. I am very grateful.”
“What the Tánaiste has offered here is better than nothing but it is late in the day on top of an existing crisis. What we have proposed is that the Government should help people with their arrears by giving them a €500 energy credit and introduce price controls to hold down petrol and diesel prices at €1.75 a litre, to hold down home heating oil at €1 per litre and to reduce the kilowatt-hour charges for gas and electricity.”
“The failure of the Government to condemn in clear and unequivocal terms Trump's bloody and illegal war is mirrored in the failure of the Government to seriously address the economic and financial consequences of their bloody warmongering on ordinary people, because not only are they raining down death, destruction and fire on the people of Iran, Lebanon, people of Palestine and the whole region, they are costing every person in this country money and the Government cannot even bring itself to condemn them and, indeed, continue to allow the US military to refuel at Shannon Airport. It is shameful. Would the Tánaiste let Putin into Shannon Airport? Of course he would not, and rightly so, yet the Americans are allowed to prosecute their war.”
“Even before the Israeli and US illegal and bloody aggression against Iran and Lebanon, there was a cost-of-living crisis in this country that the Government was not acting in any serious way to address. We already had electricity prices that were approximately 25% higher than the rest of Europe. Gas prices had doubled over the previous five years. We have seen the price of groceries, etc., increase very significantly. In all of those areas, of course, massive profits have been recorded by the energy companies and the supermarket chains, and then we get this.”
“The local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, funding, which was given out in the millions to developers, was supposed to be conditional on giving back houses of €300,000 or less when it originally came out. That was abandoned. In places like Cherrywood, where €15 million in LIHAF funding was given out on the condition that there was supposed to be some affordable housing, we got no affordable housing and the houses are coming in at €600,000 and €700,000. How are ordinary workers supposed to pay for houses at that price? What is the Taoiseach going to do to deliver them some affordable housing because his schemes do not apply in huge swathes of Dublin?”
“The Taoiseach mentioned that there is a focus in the strategy on housing and on the delivery of affordable housing. In my area, the average house price is now €680,000. The limit for the first home scheme for affordable housing is €500,000. In other words, if it is a new build, it cannot be more than €500,000. The Government's affordable housing schemes simply do not apply in Dún Laoghaire. Ordinary workers in Dún Laoghaire do not earn more because they earn in Dún Laoghaire. If you are a nurse, a teacher, a bank worker or a council worker, you do not earn more because you live in Dún Laoghaire. The Government's schemes are completely non-applicable. That is true in many parts of Dublin, by the way, where house prices are way in excess. What is the Taoiseach going to do?”
“The Taoiseach has rightly and repeatedly condemned Putin for a criminal, barbaric and imperialist attack on Ukraine. Will he do the same when it comes to what Trump and the Israeli regime are now doing to Iran and Lebanon? They are bombing the hell out of civilians and infrastructure in Iran. Israel is now ethnically cleansing south Lebanon. Will the Taoiseach condemn Trump's suggestion that he might "take over" Cuba, attacking another country in exactly the same criminal, entirely unjustified and illegal way that Putin attacked Ukraine? Is the Taoiseach consistent in his principles? Will he condemn it and call it out when it is done by the United States and the regime in Israel?”
“Will the Taoiseach respond to the Before We Die campaign's call for a plan, for a framework and for urgent action to provide the transitions necessary for children with intellectual disabilities?”
“Over the past week I had parents of children with intellectual disabilities from the Before We Die campaign in with me. They pointed out that about 2,000 adults with intellectual disabilities are living with parents who are over 70, and about 500 of those people are living with parents over 80. Their parents are extremely worried about what will happen to their children when they pass away and are asking, "Where is the plan?" They are saying there should be a plan, a framework. The number of houses being delivered, supported housing they need, is pathetic. They give me a figure of one transition for 2026 so far, with thousands of people needing it.”
“It is clear that Donald Trump and the Israeli regime are criminal warmongers that could do anything. If they start to bomb more energy infrastructure in Iran, and there are reports suggesting that they are already doing this having said that they would not, the miserable concessions the Government has made to address the spikes in the cost of living could be wiped away overnight. We need serious time to discuss how the Government is going to actually protect people in this country from the cost of energy spikes resulting from Trump's war.”
“Will it still be there if we move in a certain direction of outsourcing and privatising everything? I do not think so. In truth, I think some people saw the scandal around high salaries, which was an outrageous scandal, as an opportunity to have a go at public service broadcasting in this country and to dismantle and privatise it through the back door. I would like to hear from the Minister about how that is not going to happen and how this Bill is going to contribute to protecting quality media, quality public service broadcasting and decent jobs and nurturing a permanent pool of creative and technical talent in media and the audiovisual sector.”
“A deregulated, largely privatised and outsourced market is full of diversity but actually it is the diversity of Musk, Murdoch, Google and Facebook. That is not real diversity. It does not provide ordinary jobs or build up a pool of talent. Even funding for the audiovisual sector in terms of section 481 is supposed to be dependent on building up companies of scale and permanent pools of skill and creative talent. That is what it is supposed to do. Money is provided on that basis but that is not actually what is happening. What is happening is that we are doing away with the permanent pools. One of the things that RTÉ did was make documentaries that nobody else would make. It made television series that were trying to reflect Irish society and its development and evolution. It had and still has an orchestra.”
“Do not get me wrong, transparency around media ownership is good but if we do not have a public service broadcaster, things are going to go in a bad direction. Public service broadcasters have an influence on how the rest of the media behaves. One of the reasons our media is better than in America, for example, is that there is still some notion of having a thing called public service broadcasting, of having an orchestra and of celebrating culture and heritage and things that may not be profitable or garner lots of advertising but which are making a contribution to society. Public service broadcasters work in the best interests of society. They celebrate our culture, heritage, arts and things that are not profitable.”
“This means, for example, that American quiz shows are going to get tax breaks from the public to produce quiz shows that are ostensibly made here. Meanwhile, people who had proper jobs in the audiovisual sector in public service broadcasting are finding that their jobs are being done away with and RTÉ is being hollowed out. There is talk here of the internal market of the EU and removing barriers in order to ensure greater media diversity but the actual net result may be that we do away with public service broadcasting, everything gets outsourced and privatised and secure employment in the audiovisual sector and in the media will be slowly but surely done away with. That is what is happening. Some of the Bill's aspirations, as I said, are good.”
“There are also the technical people in animation and all the rest of it but the fact of the matter is that in the largely privatised Irish film industry nobody has a secure job. It is film-to-film, episodic work. There are no guarantees. Workers do not have any of the entitlements that people who are directly employed have, like those employed by RTÉ, for example. They do not have the income or employment security that they might have with a public service broadcaster. This is what is happening now in RTÉ to the ordinary people. Programmes like "Fair City" and probably "The Late Late Show" are going to be outsourced. We are going to give more tax breaks, with the section 481 provisions extended to the non-scripted sector.”
“The sins of a small number at the top of RTÉ are now being paid for by the people who were not getting paid big salaries, the ordinary people like technicians, journalists, camera operators and all of the backroom people who actually make the thing function. They are going to suffer and the jobs that many of them did are just being done away with. Those jobs are going to be outsourced to private operators. Who has the money to engage in audiovisual and media production? Only the big players, by and large. There has been a lot of praise for the Irish film industry recently and how well it is doing and there is no doubt about our creative talent, including Jessie Buckley, Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan, the list goes on.”
“I would like to see a better balance and I would not be backward about coming forward when it comes to criticising certain decisions RTÉ makes but we have to fight very hard to protect public service broadcasting because we have far more influence and say over what RTÉ does than we have over what Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, Bill Gates or any of those characters do. We have far more influence because we can haul RTÉ in front of an Oireachtas committee. We can have an influence when people are getting paid, as they were, absolutely excessive salaries at the top of RTÉ. I refer here to the scandal around the salary for Ryan Tubridy and so on. We can actually do something about that and influence the situation.”
“While they are worthy aspirations, the real world situation of media is the hollowing-out of public service broadcasting through increasing privatisation, with things that were done by public service broadcasters being outsourced to private operators in a context in which the people who are coming to dominate access to news, media and information are a billionaire class of social media owners or media magnates like Rupert Murdoch. Competition very often just leads to monopolistic control of the media on a global level by big players, the big billionaires who own media and social media. At the same time, we have our Government effectively dismantling RTÉ. I often have my disagreements with RTÉ over editorial decisions and so on.”
“There are references in the Bill digest to removing obstacles and barriers to media organisations operating across national boundaries within the European Union, and to the importance of competition. Often it is suggested that if we have more competition we will get more media diversity, that competition is going to help to achieve all of those aspirations with which one could not but agree but is that actually the case in the real world? I just wonder about that.”
“The Media Regulation Bill sets out aspirations that, on the face of it, one would consider to be very good. Its objectives include protecting editorial independence and journalistic sources. EMFA, from which this Bill derives, refers to ensuring the independent functioning of public service media, enhancing the transparency of media ownership, guaranteeing transparency in State advertising for media providers, boosting transparency in audience measurement for media services and so on. They all seem like worthy aspirations. Protecting the diversity of media, providing transparency around ownership and ensuring the independence of journalism and editorial independence are all things we would definitely want. However, I am concerned that this debate is taking place in a real world context.”
“Apparently this is a mess-up by the project management company not submitting stuff relating to further information to do with the planning permission, and maybe the Department of education's building unit. The children have been enrolled in a class which got the green light but there is no physical building or class and the parents do not know whether their children with special needs will have a classroom to go to this September. They want to meet the Minister, and they would like an affirmative response.”
“Children with special needs, just like every child, have a right to an appropriate education. I heard the Tánaiste say earlier on that there have been lots of announcements about special classes and places, and even that once the Government gives the green light, these things are delivered. I have been asked by the Equality in Education Dublin North West campaign and my colleague, Councillor Conor Reddy, to raise the issue of Finglas Parochial National School where children were enrolled in two special classes last September but the physical delivery of the classes has not happened. It now looks like it may not happen this September. The parents have written to the Minister seeking a meeting.”
“There is the cost of energy, petrol and home heating oil. This means every single person in this country and in the world is now paying a price for what Trump is doing. Is that not a good enough reason to condemn him and for the Government to do everything in its power to stop this madness, as well as the immorality of the killing of people in an illegal war? It seems to me that it is. I just wanted to say that because we are all paying for Trump's war now, for his bloodthirst, for narcissism and for his ego. God knows what it is that motivates that psychopath. There is no other word for what he is. He is a psychopath.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this important motion on the cost-of-living crisis. As well as the issue of the action the Government needs to take to address the spiralling cost of living, and particularly the cost of energy that has hit hard, I would just like to underline a point about the failure of the Taoiseach to speak up yesterday on the economic impact of Trump's war on people here. Even if he is not willing to condemn the death and destruction being rained down on the people of Iran and Lebanon as we speak and the ongoing genocide being committed by Trump's partners in war, Israel, on the Palestinian people, if he is willing to hand over a bowl of shamrock and stay mute about those things, could he not say something even on the much more parochial basis that Trump's war is costing every single person in this country now?”
“As somebody who was born in a mother and baby home, I was lucky to have a good outcome. I am acutely aware of the feelings and sensitivities of people like those who suffered and were traumatised and of infants who lost their lives in places like Bessborough. There is urgent need to take on board the reason people are protesting this evening. I will be joining that protest. We need to listen to these people and acknowledge their concerns.”
“Is the Minister telling me they are not involved in the bloody carnage that Trump and the Israelis are inflicting across the Middle East right now? Imagine if a Taoiseach went and handed shamrock to Vladimir Putin and did not say a word about the murderous invasion of Ukraine and allowed Russian troops into Shannon Airport while the invasion was going on. There would be justifiable outrage, yet that is what the Taoiseach did with Trump yesterday despite his warmongering.”
“I would have gone to the United States and I would have stood with people like Mamdani, who reminded us of our own history of opposition to colonialism and war. I certainly would not stand beside a warmonger like Trump, who is ripping up the international legal rule book to pursue a bloody and murderous war against Iran, and is co-operating with Israel, which is in the dock for genocide and is bombing the hell out of Lebanon. Our Taoiseach cannot even bring himself to condemn this, even when it is imposing an economic cost on every single person in this country and across the world. He also continues to facilitate US troops going through Shannon Airport. In just one day, on 15 March, four US troop carriers went through Shannon.”
“But no, our Taoiseach was leaning into the justification that Trump has used to justify this murderous war. How can the Minister possibly stand over the Taoiseach's failure to condemn the flagrant breaches of international law and the illegal war in the White House yesterday and continue to-----”
“The Taoiseach of this country sat beside Donald Trump yesterday, handed him a bowl of shamrock and celebrated our national day with this warmonger even though, as Taoiseach, he has repeatedly claimed that this country is committed to international law. Yet, not a single word of criticism of the flagrant murderous breaches of international law in which Trump and Israel are engaged. At one point, I thought he was going to say it when he said we cannot have rogue regimes possessing nuclear weapons. I thought he was talking about Israel, which, of course, has nuclear weapons and will not even sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, or about the United States, the only country in the world that has ever used them and which has launched this illegal war.”
“Almost 800,000 people have been displaced and there are now real fears that we are going to see a repeat of the genocidal horrors that we have seen in Gaza for the past two years happening in southern Lebanon. As if all that death, destruction and horror being visited on people in Iran and Lebanon and the genocide in Gaza is not enough, every single working person in this country and across the world is now paying a direct economic price from their pocket with the cost of home heating oil, petrol and other fuel having gone up, all as a result of Trump and Israel's war. I repeat that Israel is a regime that is in the dock for genocide and in the International Criminal Court.”
“Yesterday, Joseph Kent, who was the director of national counterterrorism in the United States and a senior official in the American Administration, resigned over Donald Trump’s war against Iran. In his letter of resignation, he stated that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation” and attempts to justify the war were lies. He described the war as one manufactured by Israel. That war, since Trump and the Israeli regime commenced it, has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 innocent Iranian people, including 160 schoolgirls who were wiped out in one attack. In Lebanon, 900 people have been murdered by the Israelis. As we speak, Beirut is being bombed to bits in one of the worst reigns of death and destruction inflicted by Israel on the people of Lebanon for a very long time.”
“Even Iran signed that and was willing to do a deal over this stuff. Even though I have criticisms of that regime, the Omani foreign Minister has confirmed it. This is pure bloodlust, warmongering and imperialism by America and Israel and the Government is complicit in it. It is shameful.”
“It is such a betrayal of our tradition of neutrality and anti-imperialism that we are going to get down and bend the knee to these bloodthirsty warmongers who are setting the world on fire. It is really revolting. I do not believe the Government has the support of the majority of people. Most people can see what is going on, the price we are going to pay for it and the economic price they are starting to pay themselves as well as the horror beginning to unfold across the Middle East. There is a logic to this. I will disagree with Deputy Paul Murphy, in that when Trumps says it is dangerous when certain people get nuclear weapons, he is absolutely right - he is dangerous. Donald Trump has nuclear weapons and Netanyahu has nuclear weapons. Israel is the only country that will not sign nuclear non-proliferation treaty.”
“It is facilitating it as we speak, just as was done by previous Irish Governments when they facilitated the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, also based on a pack of lies about weapons of mass destruction, supposedly about taking out a dictator which led directly and indirectly to 1 million people dying and 4 million people at the time being displaced in the biggest refugee crisis the world had ever seen until that point. That also triggered the destabilisation of Syria and led to an even bigger refugee crisis which the world is still seeing the consequences of. It led to the rise of ISIS and Al-Qaeda. This is the consequence if you let these people away with it. Is the Irish Government seriously going to go over and hand this guy a bowl of shamrock next week? It is disgusting.”