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

Some of the rebel groups are operating in that area. Some of the conflict is taking place there. It is spreading across Syria and into Turkey. If the Minister knows where it will end, I think he is making a serious mistake. The US is escalating the conflict by starting to bomb. This will fuel a situation that is already dangerous and disastrous. The most useful thing we could do in these circumstances is pull our troops out for their own safety and finally begin to stand up to and challenge the inconsistency, hypocrisy, manipulation and double standards of what the big powers are doing in the region, which has fuelled the growth of ISIS and the other insurgent Islamic groups. We should stop supporting regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. We should stop co-operating with an Egyptian regime that is digging the grave of the Arab Spring in Egypt. These are the sorts of things we could usefully do instead of endangering the lives of our troops. If there is no problem, why has the Minister said the mission should be reviewed? Why has he said we need to rethink its whole purpose? It is obviously in the context of what is happening in Syria that the Minister is making such remarks. If this was not an issue, the headquarters of the mission would not have redeployed and the Minister would not have said in his speech that the whole basis of the mission is being reconsidered. He said that it needs to be reviewed. That is being done because the Minister can see what a dangerous mess there is. I am saying we should go one step further by pulling the troops out and finally beginning to challenge the disastrous policies of the Western powers in the region.

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