Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that the Deputy's party, Fianna Fáil and others contributed to the Green Paper process by making a submission. I was interested in Sinn Féin's submission in the context of the issue the Deputy has raised. It states, "The Green Paper on Defence states that military neutrality is a policy which was formed in the context of interstate armed conflict". We are agreed on that. The submission further states the Green Paper "is ill-fitted to respond to threats emanating from non-state actors such as terrorists". I know the Deputy's party is soft on terrorism but I am not sure to what extent he can suggest that military neutrality has a role to play in regard to terrorism. Is he suggesting that if terrorists explode a bomb in London or Madrid, we should proclaim our neutrality from the rooftops as some sort of moral standpoint of a higher echelon than those who say, "This is a bad thing, we are opposed to terrorists and we should join together in preventing innocent people being killed by terrorists"?

See this speech in context