"Madam President, I was a student leader in Ireland 30 years ago and, inspired by the heroism of Romanian students and workers, I travelled to Bucharest and Timișoara and spent over a month there in the midst of those revolutionary days. I have to say that it was one of the most defining experiences of my youth to witness the overthrow of Ceaușescu's brutal totalitarian regime, an elite which enriched themselves at the expense of the population and developed a vicious secret police and state apparatus to do so. It was an absolutely incredible experience. To feel the hopes of the population for the future, for democracy, for a say in their lives and for a more stable economic experience was very humbling. But we have to be honest as well, because what did they get? In many ways they got much of the same elite in new clothes, combined also with a new elite – a new neoliberal elite – and many people have unresolved issues there. We have to ask why Romania has got the second biggest diaspora in the world, second only to Syria – five million driven out of that country. There is a lot of corruption still to tackle. So I stand continually in solidarity with those people. The revolution has not been completed there."