Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 1 Dec 2021

Goe'r maith agat, Slas Gheerlich. Minister, I want to welcome you to the House. I think this is the first time I have addressed you since your elevation, so congratulations on that. At the outset, I want to thank my colleague, Senator Michael MacDool, for giving leadership to our group in this area. Sitting here listening to the debate this afternoon, the level of passion from all sides of the House and the excellent speeches that were made by all of my colleagues must surely drive home the message that we in Ireland need to wake up. Minister, in January, the European Parliament passed a resolution urging Member States to revisit their engagement policies with Taiwan. I fully support this, and having visited Taiwan as a member of the Irish-Taiwan parliamentary friendship group, I know only too well the value democracy and trade is doing for this. Indeed, when we visited Taiwan, we visited at a time of an election. And it was absolutely something else to see tens of thousands of supporters of different parties on the street. Speeches being made on street corners, massive rallies. We saw it all. We visited election booths or election centres, and we watched people freely come in to cast their franchise and freely leave. Nobody at any stage stopped anybody or spoke to them. The officials that were in attendance simply did as they do in every constituency in Ireland. They handed out ballot papers and people cast their ballot and put it in the ballot box. That is democracy. That is democracy. And we saw it in operation. I honestly do not believe that active engagement between members of the Oireachtas and Taiwan can damage the relations between Ireland and China, and are in conflict with the long-standing One China policy. However, I am aware of the fact that the Chinese get extremely upset when they hear people speaking about Taiwan and about Tibet, and about various other things that we do not like about China. And that is typical of the bully that was in the schoolyard when we were kids. He or she determined who you could be friends with and who you could not be friends with. But the true test of friendship is to be able to tell your friend what you are doing is wrong. And not to have your friend turn on you and say, well, if that is the way you feel, I am not going to talk to you anymore. My colleague, Senator Lin Ruan, spoke about how we seem to be forced into prefacing everything we say with trade. Sometimes, just sometimes, there is more to life than trade. Myself and my independent colleagues have often spoken here about the plight of Richard O'Halloran. He is still in China several years now. He is there two, two and a half years. I have spoken to his wife many times. If diplomatic relations are to have any value, Richard O'Halloran should be at home. Richard O'Halloran should not be in China. His children are growing up. They will not know their father. I spoke to somebody the other day who was involved in the resettlement of prisoners from Vietnam. And one of the things he was advocating was that I would get somebody to make a DVD of what has happened while Richard has been away. Because when he comes home, he has to, if you want, reacquaint himself with what has happened in Ireland. To have a man locked up out there for no reason and no judicial process to keep him there. Please, when you go back today to Minister Coveney, tell him I do not buy it anymore. I simply do not buy it anymore that we are working hard to get Richard at home. If we were working hard to get Richard home and if we had any standing whatsoever in the world, Richard would be home. Now, Minister, I visited China way before I came into this house as a lonely or a lowly teacher. And I went out there to the family of a student and I was brought around to visit schools. And I contrast what happened there with what happened when we watched elections in Taiwan. Every school we went to, we were welcomed. It was very formal and the formality became more strict when the political officer came in. And there was no feeling of people with free speech. In almost every classroom I visited, I was asked what I thought of China's record on human rights was. Why was I asked that question? If you visit a school in Ireland, in England, in France, in Germany, do somebody turn around and say to you, what do you think of our record on human rights? This was all predisposed. And the reason was, China is desperate to show itself as a country that respects human rights, while at the same time showing absolutely no respect for human rights. In the few seconds I have left, I want to talk about the corporate world. Gerry Buttermore just spoke about corporate support for the Beijing Olympics. It should be nothing unusual to any of us here to recognise the fact that the big corporate world could not give a continental damn about human rights or anything else. Their bottom line is profit and profit only. They do not care about human rights. If they did, we would not see the exploitation of children making clothing in some parts of the world. We would not see children mining in other parts of the world. These things would not happen if big corporate world people had any respect for human rights. So maybe they are in the right place in Beijing, standing alongside a totalitarian regime that cares sweet damn all for the people that it rules over. Minister, I know you represent this country abroad and you do a good job. Please, when you go back to your cabinet or your ministerial colleagues, please tell them we have to wake up. We may be small, but we do have a voice. Let us open an office in Taipei. They were damn good to us when we needed PPE quickly. Thank you very much indeed. You have something very useful. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. So thank you. Nice. Thanks. You are so grateful. Thanks for your time. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. We Nice to see you here. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. So much friends and I know the talk from today.