Search the record

deal. Sinn Féin representatives in every single year since have been urging the Government to stop this deal. Rather than heeding those calls, the Government played an absolutely obscene game of duplicity, pretending to farmers that it was opposed to this European trade deal with the Mercosur states

seven out of ten people going to prison should be the point where the State intervenes to address the factors by which we stop the next reoffending, the next victims being hurt and the next communities being terrorised. Quite clearly, there is no capacity to do that … that those notes, those insights to trauma, those written words that capture probably decades of oppression, victimhood, beatings and abuse are all fair game for a victim's judicial exploitation at trial. The justice committee heard overwhelming evidence on this and recommended in no uncertain terms, a complete

listened to the debate in my office today. The industry will be decimated, full stop. We have seen it with the fishing industry. We cannot say we went out and bargained for this, that and the other. The fishing industry was sold out. We should have a fishing … Ursula and her buddies because they paid off another country during the week with millions and millions of euro. This is how the game works. It is absolutely farcical that we are here and we have been waiting so long for this. I have listened to other speakers

hand, the Government has suggested it is opposed to the deal but, on the other, it does not do anything to block or stop it when it goes to Europe. It had ample opportunity over recent years to build an alliance with other countries across Europe to block … product coming in from Mercosur countries. For these reasons, we simply have to hold the Government to account. It did not play the game fairly. It pretended it was opposed to the deal when in reality, and as everyone knows, it worked hand in glove with its friends