Ruth Coppinger
Dublin West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“Next Wednesday, the trial continues of the Ulm five, including the Irish citizen, Daniel Tatlow-Devally. A delegation of TDs and Senators, including me, will attend the trial in Stuttgart next week.”
“This man said of one woman that he would attach her to a concrete block. He said of another that he would set fire to her. Should this person be getting a pay off from the Army? No, of course, he should not. He should have been put on trial.”
“I have very little time left, but I want to put on record that the woman in question was abused by an Army officer using military equipment and surveillance technology, which is extremely scary. She made a complaint, which has never been pursued.”
“When is the victims of crime Act 2017 going to apply the Army? The Women of Honour have pushed for change so that if there is abuse within the Army there will, we hope, be mechanisms to deal with that, but what about women who are abused by Army personnel who are not in the Army?”
“This officer was involved in a GoFundMe campaign, where rapists' names were used as a joke by the various men who contributed to it. I do not think rape is funny and the Army should not either. That GoFundMe campaign was left up for a long time. Why is the Army a law unto itself in relation to gender-based violence?”
“The victim's belief is that the military prosecutor has evidence of a very dangerous man but for some reason, the Army does not seem to be concerned because it has not prosecuted him on those charges. Why would the Army not want to prosecute somebody? Are we at war or something? Why is it so secretive?”
The complete record
Every one of 1,205 lines we hold for Ruth Coppinger, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 12 of 25.
“The two women were traumatised listening to hounds savage a fox. They tried to drown out the shrill cries from the fox by playing very loud music in the house. The woman could not eat for about a week afterwards. Does the Minister think that is okay? Deputies will stand up and tell us that this is a pursuit and part of tradition for rural people. Rural people do not love fox hunting. It is a minority participation, 2% according to the most recent poll. Some people are suddenly concerned about wildlife, such as ground birds. Of course, a fox will go after a pheasant or a ground bird; that is a natural instinct. The reason ground birds are under threat is development, habitat destruction and all of the issues of modernisation and urbanisation.”
“Domestic dogs kill sheep and bite children. Some of them kill humans, yet we do not advocate that they be hunted down. The Irish Wildlife Trust and the National Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, NSPCA, have answered a lot of these arguments and fully back the Bill. I want to mention some of the myths that rural people love fox hunting. Nothing could be further from the truth. Again, due to time I will not read out all of the correspondence I have received. Many people have contacted my office regarding this issue. They described how people arrogantly come onto their property, trespass on their lands and terrorise them. Agnes, who lives in Kildare and contacted my office, also spoke to the Irish Independent . Her sister is profoundly disabled and hounds invaded their garden.”
“If a cull is needed, it is up to the Department of agriculture to organise that; it will not be a wild west situation of leaving it to individual fox hunts. We keep hearing about the equine industry. A UCD report found that less than 5% of our equine sector is reliant on hunting. There is huge potential to expand the equine sector. Loads of working class kids and ordinary people cannot access horses because it is still an elitist sector, such as trekking and so on. Last week, there was a bill in the Dáil on dog welfare. I know the names of all TDs with dogs at this point because we heard from Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael about how they love their dogs. A fox is a dog - madra rua. It is a wild dog. Why is a wild dog of less importance? If Deputies vote against my Bill, why are they okay with wild dogs being hounded like this?”
“There is tourism in fox hunting because it has been banned in the UK. There is money in hunts for those who organise them. Again, I do not have time to go into all of that. I want to deal very quickly with some of the issues relating to foxes and farming. As I said, they keep down the number of rodents, which is important for arable farming. Rabbits can cost arable farmers a lot of money. The fox is portrayed as a threat to sheep and livestock. The biggest threats to lambs are weather, starvation and disease. They are the leading causes of lamb mortality. Only 1% of lambs are estimated to be lost to foxes. In areas of hill farming the figure may be slightly higher. Let us have grants to help hill farmers deal with that. Good husbandry and fencing are the way around this. We keep hearing that we need to keep down fox numbers.”
“They can be injured and, as we know, are often dumped and shot by their owners when they are no longer of use. Why is this barbarism maintained? The argument from one party, namely Sinn Féin, was that it would go underground and we need to regulate it. It is practically underground anyway because there is evidence of criminal adjacent behaviour. As those who attended the briefing we had last week will know, foxes are often put in a sack when caught and brought to dogfights according to wildlife rescuers who have found foxes consistent with those sorts of injuries. In a survey carried out by thejournal.ie , it was found that foxes sell for about €100 and there are about 4,500 members of illegal hunt clubs. There is money in this. As with everything, that is what is keeping it going.”
“The hunt has several options; they can leave the fox if they are confident of finding others, they can dig him out with shovels, or they can send for the terrierman Either way, it is a horrific ending for the fox. I took part in a debate yesterday and the person I debated said a fox is wily and cute, as if it enjoyed this. What I will say comes from people who study animal behaviour, not a TD speaking off the top of her head. For the fox, there is heightened fear, exhaustion and loss of motor control. The Burns inquiry, carried out before fox hunting was banned in England and Wales, found that a fox had severe mental trauma. The other animals involved in this barbaric process, such as horses, also suffer. They are forced to run and jump. This is a prey animal whose first and primary instinct is flight. Hounds are also hidden victims.”
“This part of the hunt provides the “field” [the riders] with the excitement they crave as they hurdle fences, ditches and walls in pursuit of the fox. The fox will go anywhere to escape the hounds. He will try to go to earth down a fox-hole, drain or badger sett, but these escapes are likely to have been blocked the night before by hunt supporters. The fox will run among sheep and other livestock, the hounds following in pursuit, resulting in the livestock being scattered and put under stress. If he cannot escape, the fox is chased to exhaustion at which point he will be caught and savaged to death by the hounds. Foxhounds are bred for stamina, not speed, otherwise the fox would be caught too soon and spoil the hunters’ fun. Often a fox will succeed in finding an unblocked refuge.”
“We will keep hearing that this is a rural versus urban issue, but the statistics say otherwise. In Connacht-Ulster, 72% of people in the poll to which I referred were opposed to fox hunting and in Dublin the figure was 76%. It is virtually the same feeling. The importance of the fox in Irish folklore and history needs to be stated because it has been demonised. It is a native species, important to our biodiversity and plays an important role as a pollinator to spread seeds in our ecosystem. I want to start with what happens on the fox hunt because we will hear a lot of things. This is about cruelty to animals. The Irish Council Against Bloodsports provides a very good description: The dogs are sent into an area to scent out a fox and force it to break cover ... the chase begins and can continue for an hour or more.”
“It is ironic that in 1919 Sinn Féin, for example, the forerunner of the three big parties in the Dáil today, ran a campaign of disruption of fox hunts in protest at the release of prisoners for independence precisely because fox hunting was carried out by the landed gentry. The participants may be different, but it is ironic that the three big parties in the Dáil that profess to be nationalist maintain this when it has been banned in the UK for over 20 years. There is overwhelming opposition to fox hunting in this country. Let us be very clear on that from the outset. It is not popular in any way whatsoever in all regions and among all ages. We have heard some Ministers banging a rural-urban drum all week. However, a recent poll found 73% of people are opposed to fox hunting and only 12% expressed any support for it.”
“I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." We are here today on an historic occasion. This is the first Bill in Dáil Éireann to specifically outlaw fox hunting. There have been attempts to ban a range of blood sports before. The origins of fox hunting are around the 1400s, when foxes were on farmland and people rounded up a dog to get rid of them. This became a formal sport in the nineteenth century by the British, our colonial rulers, dressed in master attire and all of the trappings of hierarchy. Oscar Wilde's famous phrase, "[T]he unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable", still applies. However, the personnel have changed socially.”
“I also send my solidarity to the Jewish community in Sydney following the appalling attack. I am sure the Taoiseach agrees with me that cities should be liveable and should have culture as well as venues where people can meet, socialise and enjoy themselves. Will the Cabinet committee on housing and local government discuss the issue of The Complex, a very important cultural space in our capital where artists are currently housed but have been given an eviction notice for the middle of January? A protest on this will come to the Dáil tomorrow. I have attended meetings and other get-togethers in The Complex. In fact, it was the venue for the launch of one of the presidential campaigns. Dublin City Council is open to buying The Complex but only if it can be given 80% to 90% of the funding. We need to intervene to buy this for €10 million.”
“The Taoiseach should learn from the presidential election where whips did not work very well and allow a free vote. It is not about the budget, the programme for Government or an economic issue. It is about a conscience issue - a cruelty issue. Will the Taoiseach allow a free vote?”
“Tomorrow, there will be a first ever Dáil vote on banning fox-hunting in this country, a drawn-out killing for sport of foxes, one of our native species. It has been outlawed in the UK and most of Europe. This practice has been opposed in successive polls across every demographic, region, province and age, yet the three big parties seem to support it so they are out of sync with the general population. Will the Taoiseach allow Fianna Fáil TDs, 16 or 17 of whom I believe want to vote for my Bill, to do so? I have spoken to Fine Gael and Sinn Féin TDs who want to vote for my Bill. I ask the Taoiseach to give a lead. Given the date that is in it, let us learn that it is not a great idea to tell your TDs what to do against their will.”
“The apps are exploiting something whereby a driver can agree to take a lower fare from somebody who can only afford to pay, for example, €20 when it should be €25. A goodwill gesture, if you like, for a woman who might be stuck at night and is being brought home. That loophole is being used by these companies to bring in this fixed-fare model. Will Government develop a publicly managed NTA taxi hailing app? Why rely on these massive corporations that are only interested in greed and profit to set the standards for public transport in this country?”
“There are two things that need to happen. The drivers need to boycott Uber, and everybody here - TDs and other public figures - should say they will not use Uber because of what it is doing to these drivers. However, that is not sufficient, because we also need to legislate. Will the Government prohibit the use of algorithms to set fares and will it legislate to prohibit apps acting as third parties in negotiations on the fare between passengers and drivers? I am not saying they cannot negotiate, but negotiations would have to be done human to human. Will the Government conduct an urgent review of the app-based taxi fare models and their compliance with taxi regulations? The Minister stated that the NTA said this was in accordance with the regulations.”
“The model allows Uber to sell a driver's time to a passenger for the maximum it can get while paying the driver the minimum they will accept. To pose the question, why did the Minister for Transport not meet the taxi drivers yesterday rather than sending his officials to the taxi driver committee? Will the Government ensure that the publicly managed and regulated system of taxi driving is maintained? Will it ensure that algorithms are not allowed to decide the fare structure in this country or the conditions workers have to tolerate?”
“However, any of the extra costs - time lost or extra fuel - are borne completely by the drivers, and passengers should not be fooled. In the US, from 2018 to 2024, Uber increased its prices by 18% per year. At the same time, drivers got 12% less than under the previous model. Uber gets it in and then ramps up the charges. I do not have time to explain it but the dynamic pricing these apps are using is completely different to anything that has gone before. They are using AI and behavioural patterns of individual drivers. They are following the types of fare they normally take and then sending them fares. They are completely individualising it. The CEO of Uber talked about offering the right trip at the right price to the right driver. Uber monitors work patterns and ultimately monitors each driver to increase its profits.”
“The Irish taxi system was regulated to protect drivers' livelihoods and to protect customer service for the general public. It is governed by the NTA on behalf of the Government and is licensed, Garda vetted, has vehicle standards and a public fare review every two years that the public can feed into and under which taxi drivers have themselves rejected increases. Is the Government at all concerned that this system of regulation is threatened by massive corporations that are not even based in this country and do not necessarily pay tax in this country? The fixed-fare option for passengers can look great in theory. No matter what event happens - a road closure, diversion, toll, crash or whatever - they will not pay more than that price.”
“Taxi drivers have been staging protests about Uber, a billion euro company that is pushing a fixed-fare model onto drivers. They held a briefing here in the Dáil yesterday where representatives reported that this model, if it succeeded, could cut the earnings of many drivers by 30% to 50% and undercut those who do not even use Uber. There will be significant repercussions for the 22,000 licensed taxi drivers, a very important cohort of the workforce in this country. It could also potentially lead to a massive increase in work hours, with the implications of that for fatigue and public safety. Taxi drivers described it as a bombshell. They were very emotional talking about the vilification they had endured on social media, for example, for the action they took in recent weeks.”
“It was the theme this year of the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Deepfake videos have been mentioned. I went to the committee that the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre set up. It seems that the committee is being boycotted by the three big parties because nobody came from Fine Gael to two of the meetings. I do not think there was anybody from Sinn Féin either. In any case, absolutely incredible material is being made available by the committee. There was an MLA member who spoke about a deepfake that was used against her in the run up to the elections. This is stuff that every TD should be aware of, yet that committee seems to have been ignored by Members. We need to act, and we need to act now, not be in thrall to these big tech companies, as seems to be the case with the Government.”
“Misogyny and violence against women and children are being absolutely normalised. It will be very interesting to see what happens in Australia, whatever one's view is. There are many different attitudes one could take, but at least Australia is doing something. What is this Government doing? It is doing absolutely nothing. Is that because all of the tech companies are based in this country, in some cases enjoying zero tax, with us getting corporation tax from them the rest of the time? Ireland is meant to be legislating on behalf of the whole EU in this regard. More than half of Gen Z have had inappropriate material sent them while 44% have received unsolicited explicit images and 40% have received unwanted sexually suggestive comments. Being online is not a safe place for anyone. It is particularly unsafe for women.”
“This is not the first time I have spoken on this in the Dáil. I have one issue with a previous contribution: it is not new technology, as this technology has been around for years. For years, this and previous Governments have been effectively allowing online companies to child groom. Some 70% of 11-to-14-year-olds have seen violent misogyny online. It is not just about what is happening to people online. This is influencing the attitudes and behaviour of young men and boys. That has been proven by study after study. For example, two out of five young men hold "traditional" views. In other words, 52% of them think men should dominate and think that is what manhood is about. Some 46% of them think women's feelings and views should be utterly ignored. The President of the US said to a journalist, "Quiet, piggy".”
“A child is almost ageing into adulthood by the time he or she is assessed. I believe the period is now down to 72 months. Yippee. Again, the reason for the delay is that there is insufficient investment in staff to reduce the numbers on the lists. It is shocking that this has been allowed to continue year upon year. I salute the motion.”
“The reason is that we do not have enough permanent staff. We do not have them because of the housing and cost-of-living crises, which mean professionals, including teachers and others, are all being forced to emigrate. This is going to continue owing to the announcement today that two people need an income of €150,000, or up to that, to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment. This is all related to the fact that although there has been a budget surplus in this country, the State has refused to invest it in public services, including housing. The care system and children are suffering as a result. Dublin West has the longest waiting lists, not that it is a competition. In the Blakestown CDNT area, the waiting list was seven and a half years, if the Minister of State can imagine that.”
“For years now, the Irish State has in effect been abusing disabled children because State neglect has been continual. We all know assessments of need are essential. Imagine that children are regressing and that when they should be learning to speak properly, integrating and getting an education, they are being prevented from accessing services. We all know that practically all parents who can afford it raise money and pay for everything privately. Some 18,000 children are overdue an assessment of need, and the backlog is increasing. For three quarters of the year, only 4,500 assessments were done, so the number of children overdue an assessment will keep going up. Under the waiting list initiative taken last year, the State paid €23 million to carry out 6,373 assessments, which means a cost of €3,500-plus per assessment of need.”
“I am very bored saying them and the Minister may be bored listening to them. The first is in Dublin West in Church Fields, which Government is now hailing as being a great development, and I agree it is very good - not perfect but good - but it was socialists in solidarity who highlighted that that land was sitting there during a housing crisis and put a lot of pressure on Fingal to develop it. Similarly, there is another huge land bank up the road in Dunsink, Elm Green, in Scribblestown, which could provide thousands of houses. Government needs to have meetings with councils on those land banks and get them developed because they will be the game changers in the housing crisis, not things like judicial reviews and curbing people's power to object to things that are justifiable to object to.”
“I utterly oppose this and it is being weaponised against the public good, to be frank. These changes the Minister is proposing are taking more and more power away from the small person and communities to object to proposals that are going to impact their lives severely, with no proof or correlation made that it is inhibiting development. We all know many of the developments being objected to tend to be high-rise vulture fund developments that are build to rent right beside, say, two-storey housing or, in the case of Blanchardstown, a vulture fund fleecing workers and the community for greed and nothing else. I am utterly opposed to these changes. Government needs to get on and have its meetings with the local authorities sitting on public land banks that have not been developed for years. There are two examples.”
“It is a vulture fund with no connection with the community, with the workers in the shops or even with the other companies there. For example, footfall in Liffey Valley went down dramatically there, loads of jobs were lost and people's hours were slashed. These things drive online shopping. They are not good for communities and, unfortunately, local authorities and so on are using these ludicrous examples of, "Well, you have a great public transport system there. Get out of your car and into the public transport." We are talking about residents being up against big vulture funds and the local authority, and Government is trying to take away even further their right to challenge things. I say this as somebody who does not object to very many developments, but sometimes you have to.”
“To get a traffic study done, it can be the same. That is a hell of a lot of money for a group of residents to raise for something they believe is fundamentally unjust, especially when you are up against a vulture fund that has so much money and power at its disposal to get all the analysts in. It is a David and Goliath battle we are talking about here. We should be very careful about agreeing to any of these changes. It is nearly always working-class communities who suffer the most because they do not have that wherewithal, professional expertise, cultural capital or whatever. I want to cite the recent example of Blanchardstown Centre, where the owners are trying to introduce parking charges. The centre includes public facilities, such as the council office, the library, the post office and so forth.”
“It is double figures in one year for so many developments. It is not the cause of the problem. The Minister's Government and the previous government are the cause of the problem. I will give an example of how I oppose any changes being taken to things that give residents power. Sure, we can all cite something that looks really bad that is being delayed. Unfortunately, with any law, you are going to get something you do not like, but in general, these are very important for communities to have a say. At present, I am involved in making a planning appeal to An Coimisiún Pleanála. I will not go into the details but I will mention how difficult it is for people to do that. To get a professional planning consultation, depending on the size of the application, it can be €2,500 plus VAT, for example.”
“It is the greatest cod that judicial reviews are what is delaying the development of housing and planning in this country. It is also the height of hypocrisy because we all know, when we go to community meetings where residents are up in arms over some development, the Minister's own party members will also be there giving it loads. I attended meetings before the election. If the Minister recalls the other planning changes that were made, many developments went straight to An Bord Pleanála at the time rather than going to the local authorities, and people did not realise their local planning officials had maybe more of a connection on the ground. Now, there is this thing about judicial reviews. There are two facts. Lorcan Sirr, the housing analyst, has made it clear that only 0.22% of planning applications ever go to judicial review.”
“Fingal County Council needs to be given whatever money is needed to make it occupiable so we do not continue with this human misery we have had.”
“The Minister has been told about this for ages and absolutely nothing is happening. I do not know why Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs for Dublin West are not in here banging on about this but I presume they do not care. The other issue I want to raise is that we have a massive land bank up the road where we had been told that 7,000 homes could be built, and apparently now the figure is 20,000. It is a strategic land bank in Scribblestown, Dunsink. I have raised this five or six times since I got re-elected, as have our councillors on the council. I am pleased to hear it seems to have had some impact because it will be moved from the long-term strategy under section 28 of the NPF. This could solve the housing crisis in Dublin West. It needs to be moved on now.”
“There are 105 families who have told Fingal County Council they have eviction and termination notices. This is in Dublin 15 alone and not the entire constituency. One of the families on our list comprises a woman, her teenage sons and her husband. They had paid their rent for the house they were living in since 2009. The landlord wanted to sell and the council could not buy it because it did not have the money under the tenant in situ scheme. Every legal process was gone through. Phone calls were made to the sheriff. Ten male bailiffs came to the house when she was there alone in her pyjamas. They pushed her out of the house like a criminal. This woman has done nothing wrong. There was no emergency accommodation to be found by the DRHE or Fingal County Council. This family was literally on the streets and they are not the only ones.”
“Even I, as a socialist and somebody who critiques and challenges the market and the capitalist system, never thought I would be here, 11 years after first getting elected, and that the housing crisis would have been left to fester and become as rancid as it is. I want to ask about Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs. Where have they been? It has been like "The Silence of the Lambs" over the past 11 years as this has worsened. There are a few of them in here tonight. The only time I heard a peep out of any of them was when the investigation was taking place over the presidential election. Suddenly a couple of younger Fianna Fáil TDs started piping up that maybe the Government was not doing very well on the housing crisis. The reason I mention it is I represent Dublin West, which has been at the epicentre of the housing crisis for over a decade.”
“They could go to other countries, but they have come to Ireland and are working below their grades or qualifications, giving huge added value to the nursing homes. I urge the Taoiseach to have a heart. We had a briefing here a few years ago, which Deputy Michael Healy-Rae attended because he knew the value of those healthcare assistants in nursing homes. These are essential workers and they will go elsewhere.”
“I raise regulatory reform of immigration and particularly family reunification. It is now being made much harder for many essential workers to be unified with their families, in particular migrant healthcare assistants who were brought over here on a visa programme and are working in private nursing homes. Last week on RTÉ radio, the Minister for justice was asked by the presenter whether these people are not entitled to a normal family life. They are caring for our older people and we have to show we care for them. The Minister's reply was that no one is forcing them to come here. That is absolutely heartless, shows zero empathy and is also completely counterproductive because many of them are nurses.”
“To threaten a student with their whole third level education being completely taken away for participating in a peaceful protest is something we should take a stand against. I ask the Taoiseach to make representations to the college. Saoirse is known to me. I know that she would not participate in anything violent. I ask the Taoiseach to take this case on board.”
“The right to protest against the genocide in Palestine is being severely undermined the UK and this is being carried through to the North as well. I want to raise a case with the Taoiseach that he could raise with the Prime Minister. This is the case of Saoirse Wagner, a student at Queen's University in Belfast, who is being threatened with expulsion for taking part in a peaceful, calm and non-threatening protest on the issue of Palestine. The Palestine assembly in the college protested at the careers fair to highlight companies that are participating in the genocide. I think the Taoiseach will agree with me that taking part in student protest is a fundamental right and so important in our democracy.”
“Today a poll was released by Ireland Thinks on the issue of foxhunting. It reaffirms overwhelming opposition to foxhunting across all demographics, regions, ages and gender. Some 72% are opposed. If "don't knows" are removed, 81% of people are opposed to foxhunting. Only 2% of people have ever taken part in it. Given these huge figures, is it not a problem for democracy if three big parties in the Dáil whip their TDs to maintain foxhunting and do not allow the popular will to even be expressed in this Chamber? Is that not an actual problem? I ask the Taoiseach to give a lead by allowing his TDs to have a free vote on this issue. I am making the same call to all political parties. It is the only way we can reflect the popular will to ban this cruel practice.”
“Young people are being forced to access hormones themselves because their doctors are not helping them. We need a directive issued by the Minister instructing every doctor to help people with blood tests and things like that. I say to the Sinn Féin Members not to wait for clinicians. It is trans people themselves who understand their needs and the Deputies to my left need to listen to that. They are not listening in the North; they need to listen in the South. The same goes for all the parties. For the minority over there, I would not waste my time. They are going to continue to pick on trans people. We must be to the forefront in defending them.”
“I ask her to act. She has personal knowledge of the difficulty this is causing. I have a few points to make about informed consent versus clinicians. I was one of the people in here practically every week demanding change on abortion rights. I was one of very few TDs, to be frank; others then followed. Repeal was not won by doctors in this country at all. They came on board much later. They came on board when women, young people and LGBT+ people put it on the agenda with a mass popular movement. Then they came on board. It is similar with trans healthcare. I heard Sinn Féin Deputies talking in riddles a few minutes ago. I will demystify the riddle for them. The abortion pill was discovered by women in Latin America who were taking it to bring about miscarriages. It then became mainstream. It is similar with trans healthcare now.”
“I am glad I made it for the end of the debate. This is a critically important issue for the many people waiting 13 years, on average, for a health service. We have the worst trans healthcare in the EU. I was listening to the debate on my way here. I welcome the motion and thank the Labour Party for putting it forward. Trans people are a minority who are being disgracefully targeted, picked on, scapegoated and used to divide people. This is being done by the far right, obviously, but mainstream politicians are leaning into it because it is a difficult issue for them to tackle with people given that the gender binary, the traditional family and all those issues are promoted in society. I urge the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health to move on this. In a previous debate, she talked about her personal experience.”
“However, an absolutely crucial reason for UAE involvement is that it does not want to see a democratic regime in this area, one that would expose and give an example throughout the Arab world to overthrow despots, as the Sudanese people did successfully. For more than a decade, the UAE has been a key sponsor of the counter-revolutionary forces in the Arab world and in many other countries as well. We need to assist the Sudanese people to get rid of the internal despots and outside influence, and let them enjoy, use, democratically control and own the wealth and resources they have. Hopefully, the revolutionary fervour that was so important among young people and doctors across the whole population can be reinstated. Let us support the Sudanese people in any way we can to do this.”
“As I said, it classed Egypt as a safe place, providing legitimacy for that regime which treats refugees so deplorably. The EU has tried to make a point that it is an outside viewer on this, but it is complicit, having boosted and assisted the RSF in the past and also allowing the arms sales I mentioned. I want to mention briefly what lies behind this and why Sudan is of such interest. Sudan is strategically important because of its access to the Red Sea - it is a vital shipping route - its agricultural land and, of course, its gold. That is what is fuelling all the outside colonial forces that have backed side one or other side, and sometimes both sides, in order to have influence in this region.”
“They are wielded by the RSF, probably via the UAE, which is supporting the RSF. France has sold €21 billion worth of weapons to the UAE. These have ended up in the hands of these butchers. The EU has specifically entered into a financial relationship with Egypt, paying it €7 billion over two years for migration management. The Irish Government has classed Egypt as a safe country to send people back to. Egypt is a brutal dictatorship and it is playing a key role in all of this as well. It has tightened up residency permits and restricted people from entering. This is causing huge problems. Ireland has a role as well. Ireland has €2.5 billion in trade with the UAE, which is directly assisting the RSF right now in carrying out these atrocities, and the Government is seeking to expand that trade after establishing a joint economic mission.”
“The Save the Children charity has criticised the EU specifically for aiding and abetting the genocide, or allowing the genocide, with its strict border controls, which drives children into the hands of traffickers and smugglers and back to unsafe countries. Some 10,000 refugees from Sudan arrived in Europe and it seems that a minority have been accepted in the EU. However, the EU is also responsible for the crisis by giving support to the RSF and money to assist in holding people in their migration. These are the butchers who have been carrying out these horrific attacks and the sexual violence, and who have been using children - I have seen this in videos - to torture and kill people. We have also seen that Bulgarian, French and British arms have been found in Sudan.”
“The genocide in Sudan is still ongoing despite the RSF agreeing in principle to a ceasfire put forward by the US. It is unlikely the peace deal will end the hostilities because the UAE, which is helping the RSF, is very involved in the talks as well. The World Food Programme has noted that 21 million people face acute hunger, and many of them face catastrophic hunger. The genocide has killed 150,000 people and displaced 13 million people, but many more deaths are probably hidden at this point. The figure is likely to be far higher. I want to call out the role of the EU in contributing to the problems because it is kind of kept under the carpet.”
“I start by sending my solidarity to the Sudanese community here in Ireland, many of whom are doing amazing work in so many spheres of life, particularly our health services. They are doctors, engineers and so on and many have lived and contributed here. I send them solidarity because of what they are dealing with, hearing about the absolute horror that has happened at home. I spoke on Sudan in 2019. It was just after a revolution had taken place to throw out the despot al-Bashir. Unfortunately, that revolution was drowned in blood, and the partners in crime in drowning that revolution in blood were the RSF and the army. The two so-called warring parties were once brothers-in-arms. We have to analyse why this has happened, who is complicit in it and how it can be ended.”
“On the proposal to not count time on welfare if you are disabled, many people have disabilities when they come here and have very sick relatives as well. This is Dickensian and Victorian. We are a wealthy country but the wealth is in very few hands. We also have massive labour shortages. There are real effects from this nonsense for every migrant in this country. They are living in fear because the Minister is stoking up racism and he is encouraging and creating oxygen for the far right.”