Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the other speakers have shortened their time to allow me contribute.

I welcome the debate, although I think there is an air of unreality around it. We are not a neutral country and we never have been, and to say otherwise is ridiculous. Neutrality, as a position, historically, is almost impossible, and if we thought that by somehow putting neutrality in the Constitution would mean in a future conflict we would not be molested, we are kidding ourselves. We are also kidding ourselves about Sinn Féin. If their friends in America told them to drop this Bill, they would drop this Bill. If they said, "Stop speaking about Shannon", they would stop speaking about Shannon. There is a wider world in which we live and operate.

I worked on disarmament issues for four years with the UN and other bodies. I am a member of a number of peace organisations. I have always found it interesting that people have this perception of neutrality as an intrinsic good and they tend to equate it with concepts of peace, human rights and independence. That is a misperception. Deputy Wallace, on one of the facets of neutrality, said one would need to assume an attitude of impartiality toward belligerence. It is irresponsible to suggest, no matter what, even if there was genocide or atrocities happening, we would have to take no stance, either militarily or politically. When an aggressor seeks to dominate unjustly someone who is weaker than he, this idea of positive neutrality or passive observance is not a noble good. There is a time for active interest and active engagement. That is not necessarily an argument for intervention either. It is to recognise that one needs to get involved in some way and in a conflict, sometimes one needs to take a side.

The war in Iraq war has been cited here previously and of course we should have taken a side in that conflict. People marched on the streets. They were against it. We should not have kept our so-called neutrality as we did. Let us not kid ourselves. If we facilitate the movement of troops through our territory to a war zone, that is not a neutral stance either. However, we should have been stronger in terms of taking the right position in that war at the time when we could have.

We are having this debate at a time when the world is changing. It is difficult to see what those changes mean but we might be looking at the demise of the Westphalian era and the concept of the nation state and, with it, traditional concepts such as neutrality. If we look at the Middle East and at what is happening in Ukraine, we look at concepts of peace enforcement. To be involved in peace enforcement missions is not to be militarily neutral. It involves military operations and military engagement. It may well be that at a future time we will be called up to be involved in a peace enforcement mission in Ukraine, and Russia, at the United Nations, could veto such involvement because of our triple-lock provision. One action we should definitely take, as we talk about this area of Government's responsibility, is to move towards getting rid of the triple lock because it is indefensible to sub-contract our foreign policy to an undemocratic body, such as the United Nations.

A Member mentioned defence spending and how its reduction in Europe was good. In fact, it is not a good development. The fact that defence spending is down in Europe means we are more dependent on countries such as the United States. If we are more dependent on such countries, then we will not be able to have the independence that we would like to take in future conflicts because we depend on them for our security.

I do not agree with participation in NATO or NATO-led missions because of its possession of nuclear weapons. It is important that we get back to our roots as a country pursuing nuclear disarmament since the late Frank Aiken was foreign Minister.

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