Sir, – You can tell a lot about a person by what embarrasses them.
It seems that what most embarrasses Kathy Sheridan in "Wallace & Daly are a national embarrassment" (Opinion & Analysis, December 8th) is our staunch opposition to EU and US imperialism, our commitment to international justice and equality, our persistent opposition to the militarisation of the EU, and our defence of – not the governments of China, Syria and Venezuela – but the importance of a peaceful world order based on respect for international law, co-operation and diplomacy, and the United Nations charter.
Kathy Sheridan effectively denies we have a mandate to express these views, indicating a contempt for democracy and typifying the sheer intolerance of mainstream Irish liberals for views with which they disagree.
It is abundantly clear, based on our mandate alone, that we are not a national embarrassment.
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A lot of people are not embarrassed by our views – in fact they want them represented in the European Parliament. That’s why they elected us.
We are very proud of our work in the European Parliament. We have tabled hundreds of amendments to individual legislative proposals and are both among the top speakers, in the plenary and our committees, on issues never featured or covered by the media in Ireland despite their impact on the lives of Irish citizens.
How deeply embarrassing is it that Mick Wallace was the rapporteur for the European Parliament’s environment committee report on the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations in developing countries? That he is the coordinator for the LEFT group on the parliament’s security and defence committee and the standing rapporteur for the parliament on Iraq, on which he is overseeing a report. That he is the LEFT’s shadow rapporteur on the European External Action Service’s Climate Change and Defence Roadmap?
What a toe-curling embarrassment that he commissioned a forthcoming legal study on unilateral coercive measures and international law! That he tabled 86 amendments to the Commission’s EU climate law proposal aiming to entirely reimagine the proposal as a genuine decarbonisation strategy! Best not to mention the two years he spent as the LEFT’s shadow rapporteur for the CAP strategic plan regulation, working to radically enhance the green architecture of the new common agricultural policy in the middle of the sixth mass extinction and climate breakdown and to ensure the highest possible complementary redistributive income support for sustainability payments for small and medium family farms.
How embarrassing it is for the nation that the Bulgarian minister for culture opened up the Palace of Culture in Sofia in November to celebrate Clare Daly’s work on the rule of law in the EU, an honour never granted to a Bulgarian MEP, never mind one from the other side of Europe?
How mortifying for Ireland when the European Cockpit Association, representing the pilots of Europe, invited her as keynote speaker at their annual conference in recognition of her work on the transport committee?
How the country must have cringed when her work opposing violence against migrants by Croatian police officers, pushing back asylum seekers to Bosnia and Herzegovina, strongly contributed to a focus on the need for a real independent monitoring mechanism on fundamental rights violations on the EU’s borders, developments covered extensively in the UK Guardian newspaper, but not in The Irish Times?
The Irish Times, in fact, did not report on any of this work. If it had, Kathy Sheridan and her readers might be better able to assess that work and the extent of the nation’s embarrassment.
Our recent protest against the requirement for a Covid Safe Ticket to enter the European Parliament was a specific objection to the use of the Covid Safe Ticket for entry to a place of work. We have both received three vaccines doses. We campaigned from the start of the pandemic for global vaccine equity, central to which is our continuous and consistent support for the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) waiver. The real problem in relation to vaccination levels is not the remainder who can’t or won’t take a vaccine in Europe. The real problem, as the World Health Organisation is at pains to point out, is that only around 4 per cent of the Global South has received at least one dose.
We also believe in people’s right to both privacy and bodily integrity. These are hardly radical views; they have been expressed repeatedly by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the Civil Liberties Union for Europe.
Kathy Sheridan appears to assume debates over the use of Covid passes to access workplaces are settled. The reality is that in many EU member states, including Belgium and Ireland, these debates haven’t even begun. If and when they do, they will require a complex, challenging and delicate balancing of rights, civil liberties and public health goals. Based on her article, we doubt Kathy Sheridan’s willingness to grasp the nuances of that debate. – Yours, etc,
MICK WALLACE,
MEP Ireland South;
CLARE DALY,
MEP Dublin,
European Parliament
Brussels.