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 for me has never actually been used to nobody's been prosecuted but you are right yes it was only renewed ten years ago by a previous government and it really shows how out of step the political establishment. but now in the last number of years there's been a huge movement of women and young people reflecting a global famine assists 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 a 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. case was pushed by catholic group the prosecution of cults the iona institute and the place. because

there wasn't sufficient grounds but the fact of it is there means it could be used on it can be used against people who are religious 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. the word squiers revolution described. but i think. people have been campaigning on all these issues for many many years and we were. on abortion rights me now groups have been fighting for forty years for marriage equality so what i

would characterize it 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 doing that for political reasons for self-serving reasons as well the societal pushback that you know. 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 against the old ways of doing politics. i think it's there's definitely people fail. very it's very real like if a woman becomes pregnant and has to save money to go abroad and stick. 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 on the 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 but political civil disobedience. for example importing abortion pill some 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 chides you mean you've heard our 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 your citizens assembly was that a case of democracy in action or of the country democratic not 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 goats on the courage themselves to make the change so they outsourced 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 proposed really radical change they actually proposed much more than is in the current legislation for example up to twenty two weeks for socio economic reasons twelve weeks haven't. no reason whatsoever so this rebounded 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. obviously the case of. six years ago yesterday woman who. was 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 it. reignited the whole abortion rights movement and galvanized which can happen. in a process of six years in some respects opposite of arland in this regard because the historic ties between the church and the society of 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 particularly 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 compare the figures in all the countries where abortion has been made. it's a company you know fully free contraception that's very accessible for people well then the abortion race remains very low. if you take for example greenland which if i'm not mistaken has the highest level of our bush and the contraception there is free but the women have 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 divorce. 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 and so young people don't get access to full information because of the catholic church's ethos they can prevent these issues being learned. in school and i think it's really important that changes as well well i think we're both with agreed abortion as a woman. my contention would be that relying it. comes from a significant 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 severe trash in some sense is. that the. legalize abortion decades before any other country and. it's 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 outlaw abortion . to deal with all those major public health implications stemming from illegal abortions in and sanitary conditions a dozen one. deal with any of that i would agree with you though the reproductive

rights is a hot topic here in russia primarily because of the concerns that giving women all the control over human reproduction may have profound implications for the society as a whole it does change the institution of family has been no if there is a statistical correlation between abortion rights and or the abortion rates and the number of single parent usually single mother households and that may end up damaging the woman'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 ship. don't you think that we have undercutting them in other areas for example equality

well the type of feminism that i would campaign for would be linked with it would be socialist famine to some where. you know profit being the guy to do most of so the things that you raised there in terms of child care of course it's very difficult single. mother to get child care because it's so expensive but that doesn't have to be the case you know we could have free childcare the problem is that the well. at the top well we have to take a very short break now but we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned. while

give easy val find this us. and. for unions that. crashed in a south. designer love need a thief. in the zuma. should slip that it's a. small fortune in the. fortune for the outnumbered a lot about it more than just financial. united

states under many press as a long and boring have a break in its treaty and other promises now to the united states says it's going to leave a treaty again. in twenty forty you know bloody revolution to tikrit the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be creasing the violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it you know lawyer i mean your list put video through me in the new bill is that i mean you split needle the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty fourteen. of those who took. invested over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and. the credit.

card. welcome back to well the part with ruth company politician and a member of the irish parliament. just before the break we've been talking about old the social changes that's happening in your country and what i find interesting is that there's there's a lot of conversation about national identity both in ireland 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 and the things that are in and exports in terms of its artistic life in fact hopefully 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 continent well but 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 the work catholics they think about many of the immigrants for example in the united states of the irish sound so those things tend to be a kind of. very close did you kill

a part of the heart and was really what was swept under the carpet was the negative side which was that if you didn't conform. we have history of poor women in particular were pushed away into. homes where there are institutions. 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 excavation of bodies are buried not accounted for in one of these homes and institutions where single mothers people were married to report people against reality where you know the catholic church i mean the pope recently. there was massive indifference to his business so. the image the reality was a lot different you made the point in one of. only because of the more

youthful more liberally minded to rising up against the older more conservative establishment. that we have in other parts of the world with middle aged citizens more conservative. rebelling against the liberal. elites what do you make of the political and social changes are allowed for example in the united states or in europe. i think there is a feature 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 hillary clinton but there is a huge interest. in america because people say that the system isn't working for the majority of people. similarly in art and 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 rodale from the housing crisis certainly an ardent it's the biggest biggest problem that we have. young people are paying the price of. the bank bailouts of the last ten years there was a two tier pay system introduced so younger teachers younger nurses aren't getting paid the same as older people and i think that feeds into what we saw with the referendum where young people are 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 you 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 wealth that's been created i think something like eighty percent is just soaked up to the top it means that you know things that were taken in you know advanced copland's countries like europe like garlands like the u.s.

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 but 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 create the wealth and our ordinary working people they have we have the talent we have the ingenuity to these things for ourselves with this parasitic lace it's quite interesting visiting moscow and seeing these designer stores 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 it must it 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 the people who pay the price for us are the people all around the world to you know in 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 statistic 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 opposed that it would come with major detriment

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 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. recently for aapl how to pay back thirteen and a half billion to the country on our government didn't want to take. the message very interesting case i want to ask you about it because as you 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 unpaid 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 capitalist countries and they don't like the fact that our this knock down rates which jeopardizes all the countries in europe so they're making a stand for that reason i think the key point is this. they've now paid back. and count we have a housing crisis and aren't they are not building public housing social housing or affordable housing that 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 there aren't isn't 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 is 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'm a 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 brics that now where the british may leave the e.u. 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 medical plan sure 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. for.

terrorists. but it is. these days no matter where you are in the world the chances are you. can strike anywhere and. probably won't have the slightest idea. and if you won't see it coming. in are you there. are no license to kill. villages villages the houses the mud houses. sometimes the.

rest and then you see is alive so who have killed. children for a country for profit. how can you smile. even. as i live the good feel confident. we have. this is. why some peoples wants to take our things all the power just for damn self.

there's no a bowl around break here and no one to know why says terrorists. memories . twenty four years ago this country saw a real ugly end of the world. after the genocide there a mob women in rwanda. killed a women to fix the broken.

out. in the story the take the week on odd change china gets its military ready for war amid trade and territorial disputes and was doing relations with washington. donald trump announces the renewal of all three nuclear deal sanctions against iran

a decision that angers washington's european allies who vowed to.