Bríd Smith warns against relying on Biden, calls for United Ireland

I thought I was going to make a contribution that wasn't appropriate in that I'm not going to set out to address all the measures in this bill, but I think my contribution will be far more specific than the one I've just heard, which went all around the Houses, the world and the history. Fair play to you, Deputy O'Callaghan, you made a fine speech there, none of which I agree with. I want to start by sounding a note of caution and to say that we in this House need to be more realistic about our friends in Washington and in Brussels. I hear echoed across this House mistaken belief that Joe Biden will be the saviour of the Good Friday Agreement and the guarantor of peace in this country. Similar hopes have been expressed repeatedly in this House in relation to the great and the good of the European Union acting as a protector of our interests in this island, and Annie Bastion against a hard border. Joe Biden might know about Mayo's GAA hopes. Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and Michel Barnier continually wax lyrical about how much they love Ireland. But ultimately it would be the height of folly for us, Minister, to believe that the interests of the ordinary people of Ireland, North and South, will be the determining factor in either Biden's or in the EU's policy in the months ahead. Biden will do whatever is in the interests of US capitalism, not what is best for Mayo or Balaná. And Juncker has already stated clearly, very clearly last year, and I want to quote directly from him, We have to make sure the interests of the European Union and of the internal market will be preserved. An animal entering Northern Ireland without border control can enter the European Union without any kind of control via the southern part of the island of Ireland. This cannot happen. We have to preserve the health and safety of our citizens. Now, interpret that how you like, but that is clear to me that Joe... It does not matter. That is what he said. What was in place? Well, if you feel like you have to interrupt me, you can come back at me, but I am not interrupting any of you. I think deputies should be allowed to make their speech. You obviously are caught on this one because you would not have interrupted it otherwise. I understand to an extent the desire in believing that we have friends both in the East and the West. But given how revolting the political classes in control of Britain are at the moment, it is somewhat understandable. But there is no doubt that Johnson and the Tories have used the Brexit debate to stoke up xenophobia, anti-migrant racing, within a wider project, to use the withdrawal to position a declining British capitalism as a low-wage, low-regulated haven for the worst forms of neoliberal projects and an accompanying attack on all public services, the NHS being a shining example. It is also clear that the Tories want to be free of environmental laws and regulations and position themselves for a low-wage, anti-worker, anti-environmental competitor of both the European Union and other trading blocs. I see the Minister nodding, he agrees with me on that. What the debate here does, and what the 21 separate sections of the Bill highlight, is just how intricate and complex having a border on this island is. James Connolly rightly predicted a carnival of reaction North and South because of partition. We are only in recent decades in the South reversing some elements of that reaction when we look to the legacy of the mother and baby home scandal, for example, and much of the anti-women legislation that the southern state embedded in itself. But the same fight continues in the North against reaction, and is shown through the campaigns on the right to choose and marriage equality. However, the strongest legacy of reaction to partition today is the DUP. This is not just a conservative right-wing outcrop of the Tories. They would, by any standards of politics, be classified as extremely right-wing in every policy sphere. That type of politics has been sustained over decades only by a recourse to sectarianism and outright bigotry based on religion. The consequence of their strength as the largest party in the North has been abysmal for both communities. Protestant workers have paid dearly for the dominance of a sectarian far-right party as their primary representative in terms of public services, wage rates, social services, social protection, etc. And we see dramatically in this COVID crisis just how high a price workers pay when they are led by extreme right-wing and sectarian forces. The willful ignoring of public health advice by the DUP is based on a political philosophy that is marginalised in most jurisdictions. But we see it play out clearly in Trump's America, in Johnson's UK and in the DUP instalment. It is, when stripped of its rhetoric, a decision that economic interest must come before public health and that if the consequences are large death tolls and huge infection rates, then so be it. It is not a policy of living with COVID, it is a policy of learning to die with COVID with the added insult claimed that somehow this is the will of God. In this disaster, the issue of United Ireland and the rational case for United Ireland becomes ever clearer in the light of the COVID crisis. And I think, as Deputy O'Callaghan did, we need to remind ourselves that the people of Northern Ireland did not vote for Brexit. A practical case is made here for an all-Ireland health service, for an all-Ireland approach to the pandemic. The need for United Ireland is no longer a question of which flag flies over which jurisdiction, but it is a question of whether we can truly build a national health service for everybody on this island to ensure a safe environment with access to decent services, decent pensions and decent wages for everybody on the island. And I don't believe we can continue forever to shy away from the question of the need for a border poll. On the question of an all-Ireland health strategy, I think a lot of us are extremely concerned about this. And anybody who's listened to the GPs and the healthcare workers in the North really pleading for the government in the North to listen to public health advice can tell that the discussions are fallen well short of where they need to be. But Leo Varadkar told us this morning when this question arose that the government are continually in discussions with the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, but we don't know what fruit is coming out of those discussions. In fact, all we can see is disaster hurtling our way. And we need to know where those discussions are going and we need to know what sort of an input we can have into an all-Ireland strategy to crush this pandemic. The stormant parties, especially Sinn Féin, really need to be stronger and to spell out very clearly what the public health advice is and how they want to take measures to follow it. I leave it at that, but I don't believe that I have much to say about the individual 21 measures in this. Obviously, they're necessary if we see the world in terms of who runs what part of the country, but it is really quite a disaster for this country that we remain partitioned and, as Conley predicted, we live in a carnival of reaction. Thank you. Thank you.