primarily by young people persuading older people. people showed solidarity with people and wanted to affirm tolerance and people then said well the next is abortion now let me ask you specifically about the blasphemy law i saw people characterize it as medieval but from what i understand it's still a fairly fresh legislation i mean it was passed less than a decade ago the did more detailed definition of blasphemy what happened to your country between two thousand and nine and now to produce such a dramatic turnaround because you mentioned that the country has been changing for two decades but it seem to have changed in just the last couple of years. the political establishment have been very slow to change i mean the ordinary people on the ground have been way ahead on all issues in terms of blasphemy i mean blasphemy has never actually been used nobody has been prosecuted but you are right it was only renewed ten years ago by your previous government and it really shows how out

of step. in the last number of years there's been a huge movement of women and young people reflecting a global famine a movement as well that we see in older countries have been pushing the political establishment you know relentlessly on the issue of the abortion rights because ten women a day leave the country and five others were taking abortion pills online illegally now you mention that nobody was prosecuted for blasphemy and yet there was an investigation opened into the british comedian stephen fry a couple of years ago for his questioning of the existence of god on public radio that case was later dropped if it weren't for that failed investigation do you think the question would have been on the ballot this past weekend didn't that.

provide and necessary. for the social movement to galvanize itself i think the government was concerned to be seen to be moving in a more progressive direction in terms of separation of church and state which still hasn't happened and they wanted to pick things that were very easy to get past so stephen fry incident you're absolutely correct. doc case was pushed by. a group the prosecution of cults the iona institute and the place dropped out because there wasn't sufficient grounds the fact of it is there means it could be used on it can be used against people who are religious as well minority religions now arlen's current t. shirt prime minister. who incidentally comes from the same constituency. you do seems to be very fond of the word revolution he's used it after every mark both and i know that you disagree with him on many issues i wonder though what

term would you use to describe this avalanche of social changes taking place in your country. a shock used the word squiers revolution when you describe. but i think. issue here is my point is that. people have been campaigning on all these issues for many many years and we were you know bit on abortion rights me now groups have been fighting for forty years for marriage equality so what i would characterize it wasn't quiet but certainly yes there was islands of revolutionary change below the surface because this involved. of people campaigning on the ground knocking on doors every nice to persuade people and it was truly an inspiring thing to be involved and now you previously accused the irish political elites of submitting too much to the catholic church and i think during this interview you suggested that they may have been do. for political

reasons for self-serving reasons as well the societal pushback that you now see in r.l. and how much of it is driven by the opposition to the church and its role within the society and how much of it is political people rebelling against the old ways of doing politics. well i think it's there's definitely people feel these oppressions very it's very real like if a woman becomes pregnant and has to save money or to go abroad and stigma secrecy and shame that's a serious thing and people women were told to be silent about these things for so long so there's been a about these issues young people in particular have led the way in saying no we will not accept this hypocrisy longer and they've pushed the political establishment at every turn i mean we have to participate and marches we have to break the law in terms of peaceful civil disobedience. for example importing

abortion and spreading awareness about them just to make the law seem completely redundant and ridiculous so all of those things push the political establishment until they've no choice whatsoever well and yet i think they still tried to maneuver the way out of it. talking now about the abortion issue because i thought it was a very interesting case study in both people's participation but also political tactics from what i understand the government didn't have enough conviction she initiated changes itself so it kind of outsourced it to citizens assembly was that a case of democracy in action or of the country democratic more functioning because supposedly we all elect our leaders you be the conduit of the changes that we want to see rather than outsourcing them no you're exactly right it was very interesting the government hadn't got the girl on the courage themselves to make the. so they

outsource that decision to a ninety nine citizens under george bush actually this turned out to be a rebound in their faces because it proves that ordinary people when they listen to the arguments they decided that actually yes they should we change and they actually propose really radical change they actually propose much more than is in the current legislation for example up to twenty two weeks for socio economic reasons twelve weeks from to give no reason whatsoever so this rebound on the government on it made it very difficult for the parliament there was a committee established which i was on to go back to most so we really have to time the citizens assembly and we also obviously the case of survey data which is six years ago yesterday a woman who died of complications doctors being unable to help her they realize from what i understand. her case could only. result in the in the death of both

that this woman was actually having a miscarriage and then couldn't get an abortion and she ended up dying of septicemia so that the whole country on a reignited the whole abortion rights movement galvanized which can happen. in a process of six years in some respects russia opposite of arland in this regard because the historic ties between the church and the society were broken here very violently by the bolsheviks the soviet union was the first state in the world to legalize abortion russia now has the world's second highest abortion rate. in my opinion is not something to be particular proud of and you concerned something like that would happen in our land that abortion will be treated way too casually as almost another form of contraception i think russia has been a bit exceptional though if you can. they're the figures in other countries where

abortion is being made legal when it's a company you know fully free contraception that's very accessible for people well then the abortion race remains very well. if you take for example greenland if i'm not mistaken has the highest level of our bush and dick contraception there is free but the women is still not using them so per capita they still have a pretty high incidence of ok but if you take for example the netherlands which has the lowest abortion rates in the world they have really liberal abortion rights but women don't record to us in art and we have a severe problem because we don't have proper sex education in school so young people don't get access to full information because of the council of churches ethos they can prevent these issues being learnt in school or to school and school and i think it's really important that changes as well well i think we're both with

abortion as a woman. my contention would be that relying it. comes from a significant personal and public health risks and what i want to ask you is whether you believe that the state while permitting abortion should also do anything to. minimise the incidence of abortion out of public health considerations well abortion is a painful thing so nobody should want to have an abortion or does want to so the government needs to look women wouldn't be using contraception at the point you made about russia being the first country to legalize abortion one hundred years ago is really interesting and it's been something that i've been discussing with people since i came here because they've raised very similar questions here south and is going this way is going that way maybe all the countries as well and i think it is quite incredible that things can go backwards and you know the right to an abortion company i think is under. so that the.

decades before. well to be honest with the i don't think there is any risk to abortion rights here in russia first and foremost because the government understands very well that once you. you will have to deal with all those major public health implications stemming from illegal abortions in sanitary conditions a doesn't want to deal with any of that i would agree with you though the productive. big here in russia primarily because of the concerns that giving women all the control over human reproduction may have profound implications for society as a whole it does change the institution of family has been no if there is a statistical correlation between abortion rights and. abortion rates

and the number of single parent usually single mother households. up damaging the women's quest for equality in other areas because it's much more difficult to pursue a high powered political or business career if you have to raise a child all by yourself by giving women all the controls over human and. production don't you think that. undercutting them in other areas for example equality and well. paying for would be. most of the things that you raised there in terms of child care of course it's very difficult single. mother too. expensive but that doesn't have to be the case you know we could have free childcare the problem is that the well. is all the talk well we have to take

a very short break now but maybe i'll be back in just a few moments stay tuned. while d.v.c. vows find this us. and we are on for union. rational. desire for all of the needy thief. that the new duck cause i'm a. little bull up my pizza in the

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welcome back to all the parts with ruth cop and irish politician and a member of the irish parliament. just before the break we've been talking about all those social changes that's happening in your country and what i find interesting is that there are there is a lot of conversation about national identity both in our land but i know even more so in europe and the united states people rediscover a national identity when they are faced with the changing world around them the irish national identity is very pronounced both domestically and internationally it's represented in culture it's represented in other countries do you have any concerns that they irish national identity as we know it will change beyond recognition because of all those social changes or perhaps this is something you

would actually welcome. yeah i don't have any fear that you know our culture such as music the things are and exports in terms of its artistic life in fact hopefully it will improve. it will be more representative maybe of men and women. no i don't of i think the culture that you're talking about. what kind of culture we're talking about when the church was in control in the country i'm not sure you can parse this out because i think when people think about our land they also think about family values they think about catholics they think about many of the immigrants for example in the united states of the irish those things tend to be a kind of. very close did. what was swept under the carpet was the negative side which was that if you didn't conform to those like we have

a history of where women in particular were pushed away into mother and baby homes where our institutions were now actually overing all of this which is one of the reasons that people have moved away from the catholic church in droves in the last decades i mean we now before i left the country there were talking about excavating the sites where babies bodies are buried not accounted for in one of these homes and institutions where single mothers people were married to report so people have about against reality where you know the catholic church i mean the pope visited recently. there was massive indifference to his business so. the image the reality was a lot different you made the point in one of your articles that this historic vote possible primarily because of the more youthful more liberally minded rising up

against. the older more conservative establishment this runs counter to trying to be observed in other parts of the world with middle aged citizens more conservative. than rebelling against the liberal political elites what do you make of the political and social changes beyond our land for example in the united states or in europe i think there is a feature now if you look at the us where we would have seen the election of. for example bernie sanders who was the democratic candidate that was ousted if you like in favor of clinton but there is a huge interest now. in america because people say that the system isn't working for the majority of people. similarly in our land there is. as well where i know the conservatives are in power by

a threat. there is an interest among young people in the left ideas and the reason is that there are really from a housing crisis certainly an art and it's the biggest biggest problem that we have . young people are paying the price of an old soldier in the bank the last ten years. to introduce teachers younger nurses aren't getting paid the same as older people and i think that feeds into what we saw with the referendum on paper much more inclined to challenge you know what's been handed to them now you are a member of a socialist party with a very telling and name solidarity people before profit and you are committed in your own words to being an economic system where one percent control both political power do you find it. you can alter that economic system. both within your country and broadly. well we now have

a system whereby it's never been more equal on the planet it's now five men and they are men five of the richest people control the saying wealth is three point five billion people i mean that's completely and utterly untenable on most of the wealth that's a must for the one percent is horrid it's not invested productively in society you know they use tax shelters tax havens. or whatever to hide money. and spend it so we've reached a. dangerous situation on the plumbers whereby all of the well that's been created i think something like eighty percent is just soaked up to the top and it means that you know that were taken in you know advanced copy his country's like europe like garlands like the us normal like housing are no longer things that anybody can expect to have exactly so what makes you believe that you can actually change that

because it is one thing to you abandon the now dated blasphemy law changing anything where money is involved that i would suppose takes much more effort well obviously that's what i'm fighting for i think we have to make it impossible i think the people in korea use the wealth and are ordinary working people they have we have the talent we have the ingenuity to these things for ourselves with this parasitic lease it's quite interesting visiting moscow and seeing these designer stores but what i'm hearing about is the income of people most people is so low they can never attain to buy these products well that's for sure by the end of the same time in defense of moscow i think has also seen a lot of public areas rina way to everyone regardless of their income can enjoy benefit from their lots of sporting opportunities there are also lots of employment opportunities for the people so i'm not sure. draw the. comparison but i want to

ask you specifically about the ability of changing the system because arlen gave a name the largest tax avoidance tool in history the irish double the double irish rather which still allows u.s. multinationals to avoid corporate taxation on the u.s. profits and that is supposed to come to an end in january of two thousand and twenty and i would guess as a global citizen a year with probably. indorsed closing that loophole but as an artist do you think that's a good development for for your country i don't think it's. multinationals of all kinds of particularly american multinationals are is the basis of our policy i don't think that's a good idea at all. what our government previous governments have done is corporation tax down to twelve percent but these companies don't even pay twelve

percent many of them we've discovered pay nothing at all the bigger they are the less they seem to pay so we have companies who do pay corporation tax we've got the likes of apple google facebook who are using art and to pretend that they generate revenues in aren't and to avoid tax people who pay the price for us are the people all around the world to you know and some of the poorest countries who have been deprived of the bamford's of taxation i would disagree with you that they do not pay any taxes in fact i came across the statistics just the other day that they pay over eighty percent of all irish corporate taxes and they directly employed twenty five percent of the irish labor force can your country afford to lose them because i was suppose that it would come with major detriments to the very same people that you just put it in context i didn't say they pay no tax. i said some of them pay no so obviously there are companies you know

supermarket giants after they pay corporation tax to those figures there are behind the scenes details. so we know when we've discovered time we discovered through british and american parliamentary commission and the likes of. the average that's been worked out by economists isn't anything from three to eight percent is what they're paying they rarely pay twelve and a half the recently are awful how to pay back thirteen and a half billion to the country and our government didn't want to take. the message very interesting case i want to ask you about that because as you just mentioned in two thousand and sixteen the european commission for competition concluded that apple received illegal state aid from the irish government now owns the government . a range of thirteen billion euros plus interest in and paid back taxes and yet

the irish government is very strong desisting that presumably because it wants to keep their business. where do you find yourself and are you more strongly with the european commission or well i mean the commission did offer a reason there's a competition between different countries and they don't like the fact that are in towns this knock down rights which jeopardizes all the trees in europe so they're making a stand for that reason i think the key point is this. they've now paid back. we have a housing crisis and aren't they are not building public housing social housing or affordable housing money could be used to solve our housing crisis but we have a government that's saying no because they don't want to send a message that aren't is an open for business but i've also seen some analysts suggest that the cost of u.s. multinationals leaving. would be my. higher than those billion euro's

isn't i mean you can criticize the government all you want but i suppose they're not doing about out of their own private considerations they perhaps believe that the role of those multinational companies are so huge that the country simply. changed yes i represent a constituency where there are a lot of multinationals. i mean i me jobs that we have are welcome but the point is it isn't the case that for example if corporation tax was raised to the level that germany charged it will be double. what they leave i don't think so because they're in our in for a reason. many of the reasons you know proximity to the e.u. marcus so tax isn't the only reason we have to look at is it is it a safe thing to base your whole industrial policy on having low corporation tax not in my view because we're close to breaks that now where the british may leave

unquote their corporation tax lower than ours trump in america is talking about of course in corporation tax as well so arden's policy isn't sustainable well. we have to leave it there i really appreciate your coming over and sharing some of your insights thank you very much thank you encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and hope to see you again same place same time here on the world's apart. even. as i live eat here.

lena. we have learned things in this world and this is it well for everyone why don't some peoples also take our things all the power just for themselves as division. code will do. ministries police forces and city administrations of many countries depend on one

corporation that doesn't want to or doesn't have the composite of. just the guns. and proprietary software you don't know the source code isn't that such a security risk when you have a black box operating public eye to microsoft dependency puts governments under a cyber threat not only that. this is. all. things this is the. problem. stipend on this deal business stopped and there was a student loan who was a fund is up and his cards in the fine.

in the. interest of the members. of the. top stories here on oxy china's getting its military battle ready made trade on territory disputes and the worsening relations with washington. says the renewal will hold the free to nuclear deal science and against iran it is station that does not sit well with washington's european allies who continue to to evolve.