Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We all know NATO set up the PfP in 1994. We also know that William Perry and Ashton Carter, the brains behind it, said in their book, Preventive Defense:

The objective of a renewed Partnership for Peace should be to make the experience of partnership as close as possible, in practical military terms, to the experience of membership in NATO . . .PfP combined exercises and other military-to-military activities should advance from the partnership's early focus on peacekeeping and humanitarian operations to true combat operations.

The PfP is, and always has been, a disgusting contradiction in terms. Ireland should have nothing to do with it. As a neutral, post-colonial country, we should have nothing to do with the neocolonialists in NATO. What we are being asked to do today is to agree to Ireland signing up to EU and NATO Partnership for Peace SOFAs. We are being asked to entangle Ireland ever more closely with a Europe newly determined for wars to start so it can give its armies something to do with the weapons it is eagerly amassing to the benefit of the arms industry.

I have an interesting quote regarding to what deeper entanglement might mean for Ireland:

Our view is that any decisions involving a closer association with NATO or the Western European Union would represent a substantial change in defence policy, and would have long-term if not immediate implications for our policy on neutrality. Any such proposals must be put to the people in a referendum before a decision is taken.

That was Bertie Ahern in 1996. Fianna Fáil fought and won the 1997 election on the basis of opposition to participation in the PfP. What has happened since then to change that status? Absolutely nothing, except a much deeper drive to arms and enrichment of the arms industry. We should not have had anything to do with it in 1996 and we certainly should have nothing to do with it in 2019 either.

See this speech in context