Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I would appreciate a straight answer to the question asked.

Second, there are 20 binding commitments. There seems to be slippage between the terms "project" and "binding commitment". On what binding commitments mean, the Minister of State says we can opt out of whatever "projects" we want. I am not asking about projects but about the binding commitments to which we will sign up when we join PESCO. Is it not the case that we will be bound to increasing defence budgets in real terms? We will be bound to carrying out a regular review of these commitments. I am reading from the 20 points in the actual PESCO agreement which was agreed to at the Council. I am not paraphrasing. "Successive medium-term increases in defence investment expenditure [...] Developing interoperability [...] aligned with NATO standards". That is what we are signing up to in the agreement. We have no idea - the public has even less idea - what all of that means.

The Minister of State keeps referring to the Lisbon treaty which does not require us in any way to provide for enhanced co-operation. What was signed up to in Lisbon was that there would be what was called enhanced co-operation. There are other parts of the foreign and security policy, or defence policy - I cannot remember the exact titles - which spell out what the policies are. When the people signed up to the Lisbon treaty, they did not sign up for permanent structured co-operation, a more advanced form of military co-operation. We are not required to sign up to it. The treaty simply provides for it, yet we are now making a leap. Most people will have thought that others in Europe may do so and that we would not. Now we are. When the people voted on the Lisbon treaty, most believed we would never do this.