Paul Murphy: Warns of Collison Brothers' Threat to Democracy

Thanks a lot, Ciann Comhairle. I think these are very modest amendments reinstituting some form of democratic oversight. I presume the government is going to oppose them because the whole purpose of the Bill from the government's perspective is to gut democratic oversight, to gut democratic input into the planning system. And I think the public should know where this is coming from. The Collison Brothers, two filthy rich Irish billionaires, have developed a seriously undue influence over the Irish government via the neo-libertarian think tank, Progress Ireland. First it was changing the law to allow landlords to rent out beds in sheds by getting rid of planning permission for cabins in back gardens. And now they are driving this Bill to gut democratic input into the planning system. So what tech billionaires see as critical infrastructure can bypass normal democratic checks and balances. And now presumably you're going to oppose a modicum of democratic oversight as proposed by these amendments. It doesn't take a genius to know what this is going to mean. It's going to mean data centres. Driving up household electricity costs even higher, hoovering up all the renewables that are added to the grid, just like they've been doing over the past 10 years. The next item on their agenda is normalising nuclear power. The mindless parrots over on the government benches are singing along to that tune now too. The last we heard of the Collisons was jogging through Tel Aviv tweeting that it's great to be back during a genocide. The Zionists are disciples of the notorious Koch brothers. For decades they have bankrolled the astroturf, far-right, neoliberal and libertarian causes around the world, including Javier Millet in Argentina, climate denialism and of course Donald Trump. 90 year old Charles Koch, the closest thing to a real life Mr Burns off the Simpsons is an idol for these people. Last summer Patrick Collison gave a keynote address at a gathering of libertarians in Washington DC where he eulogised Charles Koch as inspirational. The Ayn Rand Institute, the Cato Institute, the Adam Smith Institute, the Mercatus Centre, all of these shadowy Koch-funded right-wing think tanks are co-thinkers and fellow travellers of Progress Ireland with a thousand ties that bind them together. It's genuinely scary stuff that is coming here and again the government is going to oppose this amendment which is about some modicum of democratic oversight. Progress Ireland's innovation policy lead Sam Enright recently hosted a conference to discuss whether Milton Friedman was the greatest economist of all time. The fact that he was the architect of Pinochet's neoliberal reforms in Chile, which would only be enforced by a military coup and a brutal dictatorship during which an estimated 40,000 people were tortured, is no problem for these guys. If anything, as the Collison's attitude to Israel shows, it's probably a plus. When Progress Ireland launched an appeal for funding they bragged that, quote, Ireland is highly conformist and is more prone to deference to elite or expert consensus than our British counterparts. That was said to be a positive, right? That was said to be a positive in their pitch for funding. I'm making this speech to warn anyone who's watching that what we're experiencing right now is a key moment of corporate takeover. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the right-wing independents are lapping it up like the corporate lapdogs that they are. We have to wake up and stop the Collison's before it's too late. This amendment is a very small step towards doing that.