Dr. Karen Devine:

That is part of the hypothesis. Does one become more embedded in the thinking or does one become more critical? In the case of Ireland, the evidence shows that the elites have become more embedded. For me, that is why I question why the Taoiseach has to divide it into the binary of the UK versus the rest. Ireland, traditionally, has had some alignment with UK policy, such as a refusal to join in the harmonisation of corporate tax rates. On fisheries in the 1980s, the UK was our biggest partner in preventing continued encroachment with the extension of the exclusive economic zone, EEZ, of Irish fisheries grounds. Ireland and the UK have had several alliances in areas such as tax, economics, fisheries and with the CSDP. To pre-empt a point raised by Senator Bacik, the UK has not protected Irish neutrality. I did not mean to give that impression earlier. For diametrically opposed reasons, the UK and Ireland have always had a position of trying to prevent or delay the continued defence integration of the EU. Ireland wanted to protect its neutrality while the UK wanted to protect the special relationship with the US and have NATO as the primary security collective defence agency for it and the EU.

As Brexit has such serious consequences for this country, I would rather see our leader saying what the Irish strategy will be and not to be co-opted continually into this notion. The Taoiseach even said we have to be careful because our European values are under threat. In his speech, he mentioned there was some kind of feeling at a Council meeting that somehow these values were under threat and had to be defended. The idea that the UK, by exiting the EU, is somehow reversing its own values and undermining European ones is not true.

I did not refer to Prime Minister May's speech, but it is mentioned in the larger paper. She discussed Britain being a "global Britain". It was written on her podium when she spoke, it was the title of her paper and it was on the background. She stated that she wanted the UK to be more globally focused. I included so much detail on people like Wolfe Tone and Daniel O'Connell from the 1700s and 1800s because Ireland has traditionally been a globally focused island. I see no harm in that, but what I read from the Taoiseach's speeches is that it is all about "us" against the UK with Ireland's position omitted. We are the nation that is most vulnerable to Brexit. We are the nation that should be trying to drive and lead these negotiations instead of following along with the defensiveness that has been evident among the elite in the EU since the referendum result on 26 June 2016.

Opt-outs were referenced. There are opt-out areas beyond security and defence. Schengen and Justice and Home Affairs have been mentioned. Contrary to one of the myths propagated in Irish referendum discourses, though, Ireland has no opt-outs from the common security and defence policy, CSDP, and it never sought them. The Seville declaration is a strategy employed by the Government. It was a political declaration and has no legal standing whatsoever. It was simply a statement by the then members of the European Council that there would be a referendum held in Ireland on the question of military neutrality. It did not actually reference neutrality, but neutrality has always underpinned the State's foreign policy, not the Government's narrow concept of military neutrality, which just means not being a member of a pre-existing military alliance. In my presentation, I argued that this had been reversed, given that we were a part of the Western European Union, WEU, military alliance, which was subsumed into the EU. That merger was always a part of the plan of the Germans and French. The Seville declaration does not respect neutrality.

I remember a point arising from surveys. I cited Professor Giandomenico Majone, a retired researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, which is the EU's effective university. He is extremely pro-EU and wrote his book from that perspective. However, his view on how the EU takes its decisions means that Ireland has not been able to secure the notion of unity in diversity. Although Brian Cowen attempted to water down the mutual defence clause during the 2003 negotiations on the draft constitution for Europe, which turned into the Lisbon treaty, he did not get his way. In coalition with Austria, Sweden and Finland, he tried to make the mutual defence clause non-automatic in terms of obliging Ireland to commit by all means in its power to the defence of a state that might come under attack, but they failed because that was the agenda of the Germans and the French, who want to create a hyper présencefor the EU and to make it a global actor. It has always been pointed in that direction, which the debate in Ireland has ignored. We are constantly told the opposite, namely, that we are not headed towards an EU army. However, having read the writings of Jean Monnet, the original European federalist, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission today, that is the goal.

Senator Bacik is correct about the EU being an area of security and peace for individuals fleeing wartorn zones, but that is not central to the ethos of the CSDP's development. A point is omitted in the debates. A gentleman by the name of Michael Hudson, an economics professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City in the US, has pointed out that the big power member states of the EU that are making pronouncements on Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of the Middle East where problems have created the refugee crisis have actually been helping to create those war conditions. The Senator referred to how Russia was a growing power. This forms part of the geopolitical discourse. As Professor Hudson points out, Russia offered to reconcile with Europe in the post-Cold War era. It sought a trade agreement. The idea of joining NATO was even floated once.

Military resources are not the answer to a flood of refugees. An entirely different approach is required. Trying to act as a global power that defuses situations rather than builds them into "us versus them" scenarios would have a greater effect and be more in line with the traditional values of Irish foreign policy. Our Constitution refers to a peaceful resolution of disputes. Too much has been invested in creating the industrial arms base of the EU. The arms industry is worth billions of euro to the EU and across the Atlantic in the US. From the EU's perspective, I can understand the notion that it does not want to have to keep buying US arms and the suggestion that it should have its own industrial base. For example, Sweden has a large arms industry whereas Ireland does not.

My problem is that if the EU wanted to create a global actor with the capability to intervene militarily in its near abroad, in whose interest would that be done? The failure in the development of the CSDP has been in the input of the European Parliament. It was always supposed to have an input, but instead we have the classic realpolitikand Cold War legacy of not letting people know about security and defence policy. This is what we call "high politics", and it is hived off. Proinsias de Rossa, who was a member of the Labour Party at one point, was always campaigning-----