Donnacha Ó Beacháin

This goes back to why people are elected and why autocrats are doing well around the world and the Democrats and democracies are perhaps in decline or they're on the back step, is that the social contract is changing.

The fundamental social contract is changing.

You know, if you go back to the...

The 19th century, for example, you know, when social democracy was first being developed as a potential solution to the problems that existed.

What did we have?

We had a huge reservoir of the unemployed.

We had people desperate for work.

We had, you know, as Karl Marx was the first to, not the first, but one of the main ones to be pointing out, we had...

bourgeoisie who were able to say to workers, workers would come in the morning and they would say, I'll take you, you, you, you.

The rest of you, no work today, maybe come back tomorrow.

And how did we get around that?

How did we create a system which delivered for the majority, not for the few?

We created a strong nation state.

And then, of course, after World War II, a welfare state was established where people had basic rights, rights to health, right to education, right to kind of security and work, security of tenure, all those kinds of things.

That social contract is beginning to, and not only beginning, it's coming undone.

And now international global corporations are able to wield the same power that those people did in the 19th century.

They're able to go around to individual countries

and say to, like, I'll take you, Ireland, I'll take you, the Philippines, I'll take you, Morocco, the rest of you, no investment for you, no work for you.

And they are competing like those individuals were in the 19th century.

And therefore, the only solution, the only way you can take on these strong international elements, as I said, which are stronger than individual nation states, is as you cooperate.