I will continue with the theme of the hypocrisy and double standards of some European leaders and our own Government. I will touch on the issue of fisheries and what happened at the December Agriculture and Fisheries Council and Mercosur, in particular, the utter failure of Micheál Martin to stand up for Ireland's interests, speak truth to power and confront the hypocrisy at the heart of the European Commission. Let us start with fisheries. Muireann Kavanagh, a 14-year-old girl based on Arranmore Island off the coast of Donegal, was stopped from fishing for pollock with a hook and line. That is the most low-impact fishing one can think of. It cannot possibly do any environmental damage but still it was illegal for her to do it. Whereas she was banned from doing that, super trawlers go up and down the coast of Ireland and hoover up all sorts of fish, legal and illegal, perfectly within the rules of the Common Fisheries Policy. There are five corporations involved but one in particular, PVP, is based in Holland. These companies control one in six of all the fish caught in the European Union. They buy up quotas, legally, from a broken system across Europe and then they put it all into super trawlers. While they are at sea, they change licence to licence and hoover up fish. This is not only occurring in European-controlled waters. These companies have invested heavily in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. They have recklessly and devastatingly overfished mackerel, pushing the Atlantic mackerel species to the edge of the precipice. It is utter environmental devastation, destruction and degradation. Nobody in the Government has named these companies or spoken out about what they have done. Worse still, these companies actively lobbied European governments to block the only mechanism the Irish Government has, the Hague Preferences, which provided that our quota would not go below a certain level due to the amount of fish in our waters that we gave away. This mechanism has been in place for decades. It had never been blocked until December last. France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland rowed in behind these corporations and endorsed environmental destruction, environmental recklessness and utter greed. They endorsed it and sacrificed the Irish fishing communities. There was not a word about it from Micheál Martin. Did the Taoiseach get legal advice to block it? I do not know. I got some information from a freedom of information request in recent days but there is no evidence in the damn thing. Is the way the Taoiseach handled Mercosur a shock? Again, this is about hypocrisy and double standards. The Government tells farmers in Ireland, rightly, that they must meet the highest animal health and environmental standards and that we are facing a climate challenge. They have been asked to meet those standards and have done so. That is why we have world-class beef standards. What does the European Commission do in order that it can have commerce with South America? It allows beef that has none of those standards to flood our markets.

Sentiment score: -0.12

Where is climate change, climate justice, the green economy and all the other areas where we play by the rules? There are double standards when it comes to doing trade and commerce. I endorse everything Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett said. It is utter hypocrisy. The world rules of engagement, be they on human rights, basic decency or trade and commerce, mean nothing because the leadership of the European Commission is utterly incapable of doing what is right by people across Europe and the world.

Sentiment score: 0.21