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TDS HELD A video conference with Scottish counterparts about EU membership today with Labour deputy Eric Byrne telling them that “European friends came to the help” of Ireland during the financial crisis.
The discussion was held between the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union Affairs and the Scottish Parliament’s European and External Relations Committee which is looking into proposals for an independent Scotland and its potential membership of the EU.
Byrne told the listening Scottish parliamentarians that “it wasn’t Europe who sabotaged” the Irish economy and that it was the EU who helped Ireland as part of the bailout programme.
Overall, the four Irish TDs who took part in the discussion – Seán Crowe, Dara Murphy, Eric Byrne and Timmy Dooley – extolled the advantages of EU membership with social progress being among the most repeated benefit.
“Membership has contributed to many of our labour laws. Legislation about equal pay for men and women, much has come from EU directives,” said Fianna Fáil’s Dooley.
Byrne agreed, saying that in 1973, “Europe’s social agenda was very much advanced” and that membership “liberated many Irish women who were trapped”.
In Murphy’s opening statement, the TD said that the EU has “given Ireland a place at the top table in Europe” and has “enhanced rather than diminished sovereignty”.
Adding that, “where the commission is sidelined smaller states tended to suffer”.
Sinn Fein’s Seán Crowe echoed comments about the positive social impact of membership but cautioned that “we have ceded some of our sovereignty”.
“There are a succession of treaties in which we ceded sovereignty from Irish Governments to Europe,” he said.
But Byrne later countered Crowe’s comments by saying that “every treaty change has to go by the way of a referendum”.
“They (the Irish people) have voluntarily ceded any form of sovereignty that the Sinn Féin member is worried about,” he said.
The Euro
One of the primary issues in the referendum debate has bee been about what currency an independent Scotland would use.
Conservative deputy Jamie McGrigor asked the Irish TDs if the inflexibility of the Euro ‘was a major part of Irish crisis?’
Murphy definitively answered “No”, before adding that it “would be overly simplistic to say that the Euro was part of the problem”.
Crowe also said that it would be “fantasy stuff” to say that the crisis would have been completely averted if Ireland was not a member of the Euro.
Dara Murphy was reluctant to answer if Ireland would hope to continue the free movement of goods and people with an independent Scotland.
“It’s a matter for you in the ongoing negotiations you would have, it’s not for us to comment, that’s part of your own internal debate, he said.
TDs were also asked about the potential pullout of the UK from the EU, something the TDs felt would be detrimental to Ireland’s interests.
“Ireland and UK share common views on many issue in Europe”, said Murphy. Adding that “the UK is good for EU and the EU is good for UK”.
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Thanks,but no tanks. it’s time to find a political solution.
@Pat Man: I mean, Russian forces don’t seem to be getting the message that they need to go back where they came from to end this. A few shells in their direction may be a further deterrant.
@Paul Cunningham: and a welcome boost for the European defence industry
@Pat Man: What political solution? Russia is attempting to annex huge parts of Ukraine and Ukraine needs the means to stop them from doing so. Russia will not stop. They aren’t interesting in peace.
It’s amazing how absolutely naive people like you are.
@Seán Ó Briain: agreed. Russia will not stop and will not stop at Ukraine.
@Paddy Ryan: but Lavrov claimed that the west is intent on liquidating Russia in a contemporary version of the Holocaust.
Just when you think they can’t get any sicker. I’m reluctant to use the word, but these people are insane. I can’t think of any other way of describing it. Of course, it’s straight out of the Trump playbook: the more outrageous the claim the better.
It’s time to deliver for Ukraine and put an end to Putin’s War of aggression
The cold hard truth is that Ukraine and Russia’s best and brightest young men are dying, thousands of them. Imagine being a mother or a father to a soldier that you haven’t heard from in months. The govt won’t tell you anything. Most likely he is dead.
The leader of Ukraine wants more weapons… for more sons to die. For what? Its time for peace…
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: One side of the ‘peace argument’ is Ukrainian loss of independence, the extent of which is far from clear, and from that perspective I understand the arms supplies, but things are getting more and more complicated.
The conflict is currently bogged down while Russia seems to be slowly learning from its past mistakes. Ukraine beating Russia has long been the wishful thinking mode, while the realism that conflicts which don’t end in complete victory or defeat tend to end at the negotiating table is still controversial: Russia’s law-of-the-jungle approach is understandably considered not to be allowed to pay off, but there’s a big dilemma looming:
If Ukraine starts doing worse on the battlefield, which it seems to be, the likelihood increases that NATO member states get more and more invlolved, to the point of a direct confrontation with Russia. And the heavy weaponry which would then be required is already limiting the possibilities to now send these to Ukraine (this is what I think is holding back the Germans).
So western leaders are going to be forced one way or another to start thinking seriously how this war can be brought to a conclusion rather than to be allowed to dangerously drag on and on.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: Russia is employing criminals. In an army run by criminals. I don’t see how you can say that the brightest and best are dying. They are safe in st Petersburg and Moscow. You can listen to and watch some of them online. Or you could if they didn’t walk away from the interviewers, afraid to answer questions. All it requires for peace is for Russia to withdraw. Or for Russian troops to stop fighting. But then they will probably end up getting shot or beaten to death with sledgehammers by others of russia’s best and brightest. It is easy for us to sit back and watch Ukrainian soldiers fight on. And no doubt there are huge profits being made by the arms industry and so on. But until the Ukrainian army and people decide to stop fighting, who are we to tell them not to?
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: As I’Ve read elsewhere ‘If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war, if Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine’
Give tanks for the eventual elimination of Putin and his evil deeds..Amen.
Zelensky for man of the year
@Aidy McBride: LOL
We should keep the US out of this and Europe on its own should turn back putin easily. Then the Russian people will turn on their weak leader. Finally Russia can join European prosperity instead of a totalitarian schite show.
A special international dispensation for the execution of Russian war criminals on a pay per view event with the funds raised going to the rebuilding of Ukraine. All children over the age of 12 to watch with a sincere explanation of what these hateful humans have done prior to the drop. Sounds Orwellian? I don’t care. I sincerely want to see putin and lavrov with their tongues lolling. History doesn’t work anymore obviously, time for something slightly more medieval.
@Paul: What about US war criminals? Israeli war criminals?
Go get em!
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