Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Is the Taoiseach taking the people of this country for fools when he suggests that his plan to dismantle the triple lock is not a full attack on Ireland's neutrality? Whenever he attempts to justify this move he is planning on the triple lock, he refers to Russia. Of course, we all condemn Russia's attack on Ukraine as an indefensible occupation and military aggression. However, at the same time, the Taoiseach wants us to move closer to a military alliance and EU militarisation project that includes NATO, the United States, Germany and Britain, the countries that are arming a genocide in Gaza and which continue to sustain Israel's ability to commit the most horrific crimes. These are taking place on an ongoing basis but, somehow, that is different and in a different category. The Taoiseach does not mention them. In fact, he is trying to drag us closer to military involvement with an EU project of militarisation aligned to NATO and dominated by those powers. It is dominated by powers that are willing to not just do nothing about Israel's genocide in Gaza but which are actually arming that genocide and protecting the regime carrying it out. Why the double standards? Is that not the evidence that the Government is actually getting rid of neutrality and aligning us with one camp in a very dangerous escalation of military competition across the world?

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