Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

As I listened to the Minister of State, I heard him basically parrot out the same line that I recall hearing from his colleague, the Minister for Defence, Deputy Coveney, three weeks ago. The meaning of the words spoken by the Minister of State is at enormous variance with the reality on the ground. What he stated in the concluding paragraph of his speech takes the biscuit. The idea that he would object to this Bill on the grounds that he is worried it will tie hands of the Government and prevent it from speaking out against war crimes, etc., beggars belief. Those in Government have some neck when the Taoiseach exchanges the shamrock with probably the biggest war criminal on the planet and does not bat an eyelid; when they stand before the United Nations Committee against Torture and the United Nations Human Rights Committee; and when the European Parliament has said that this State may have facilitated in the area of renditions and so on and they have not listened to it and have not put in place the measures it asked to be put in place in order for us to be human rights compliant. Yet, the Minister of State has come in here and used that argument against the Bill. It has become symptomatic of this Government's approach of saying one thing and the reality being something entirely different.

I welcome this legislation. It is necessary in order to be in keeping with the overwhelming belief of the public that we would be neutral, and neutral in the real meaning of the modern world that we live in, which means peacekeeping, in which some Irish troops are already very involved. It also means, as Deputy Wallace said, impartiality which we most certainly are not at present. It means developing an independent foreign policy in an active and positive way with an emphasis on human rights, not being a lap-dog of the United States and NATO.

I tabled a written parliamentary question to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade earlier this week asking whether he was satisfied with the legislative position that we have now, if it was in keeping with international laws governing neutrality and if it was sufficiently robust. By way of reply I was given the usual waffle, as outlined by Deputy Wallace earlier, about our neutrality being characterised by non-participation in military alliances. That is not all that neutrality is. We may not actively send troops as combatants but that is not enough in terms of being neutral. It is clear by the actions of this Government, like its predecessors, that we are complicit in war activities, as promoted primarily by the United States and NATO.

I want to focus on that situation and to give a few examples because we are not neutral despite what the Government says. The WikiLeaks cables, which were released in 2010, provide graphic information about the role of Shannon Airport and how important the Americans view it - the Americans who advertise, in their opinion, that Ireland is part of the "coalition of the willing", as they call them. I will give a few examples of the cables from the American authorities. A cable in June 2004 states, "Shannon Airport ... is an important gateway for US commercial and military travel. We have a long-standing arrangement with the ... [Government of Ireland] whereby US military aircraft land and refuel at Shannon, en routeto the Gulf ... [and] Afghanistan". That is an entirely different arrangement from the arrangement that existed in the past when US troops were garrisoned in the likes of Germany and occasionally went on their holidays. We have the transit of almost two aircraft per day, even now, landing at Shannon. We know that last year, 606 exemptions were sought to land civilian aircraft at Shannon and for them to have permission to have weapons on them. We are told the Irish Government gives that permission on the basis that the weaponry is in the hold but we know from evidence given by airport workers, and by Dr. Tom Clonan, that quite often those munitions are on the aircraft in direct contradiction to what are the supposed conditions.

We know that last year that 741 permissions were sought for foreign aircraft to land or overfly our air space, almost two a day, the overwhelming bulk of them generally from the United States. We are supposed to believe that those aircraft are unarmed and that they carry no arms, weapons or explosives, and are not involved in any intelligence gathering or military activities. Those are the only criteria under which they are allowed land here. That is laughable. There is no other reason that explains such a large transit other than the fact that they are in transition, probably primarily and tragically to the Middle East because we know that is what the US uses them for.

In another cable in 2006, the US authorities said, "Shannon ... [remains] a key transition point for US troops and material bound for [the] theatres ... [of] global war on terror". In 2008, they said that the US Government appreciates Ireland's steadfast support in permitting US military transit which backstops US actions in the Gulf. We also know from the few accidents that have happened that they carry weaponry and that they are in breach of our neutrality, and the Government is facilitating that. Even in the lifetime of this Government, we had the accident where a 30 mm cannon was found to have been on display when the aircraft landed in Shannon. That was in 2012 or 2013.

We know that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade had to come into the House on 2 December last year to correct the Dáil record because on four occasions I had asked him about a Hercules C-130 which had landed in Shannon on 30 September last year. We were particularly concerned about this aircraft because it was operated by a reserve marine corps squadron who had been very active in Libya and Iraq. On four occasions we were told that the aircraft was not there. Then the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, had to come in and tell us that actually it was there and that they were sorry about that but the Department had got the wrong information from the Shannon Airport Authority. Why was the Shannon Airport Authority giving the Department of Foreign of Foreign Affairs and Trade the information when it is supposed to authorise the permission in the first instance?

We had an incident at the end of last month where a very serious type of aircraft an EC-130 Hercules, which is entirely different from the normal Hercules aircraft, landed - it was supposedly an emergency landing - on 28 February. We were told by the Minister that permission had been sought to land a different aircraft but that this one happened to arrive. It was not that it was unannounced. Permission had been sought for a normal Hercules to land on that day. It is beyond belief that we have caught out yet another administrative error in this scenario. The type of aircraft that landed then is called an "airborne tactical weapon system". It could not possibly be anything other than involved in war, yet our Government says that we are neutral.

Deputy Wallace is right in that what we have had is a sleight of hand between four Departments and rank hypocrisy to allow a scenario go on when we know that more than 2.5 million troops - almost half of the troops that landed and ended up in Iraq and Afghanistan - transited through this country on their way to war.

These are very important issues. In discussions earlier in the week the Government agreed with us that Libya and Syria are now places of enduring horror almost without end. The countries have been annihilated and the states are not functioning. There are millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered and there is no end in sight. Not only this, but these actions have facilitated the growth of ISIS and destabilisation of the entire region. Irish people do not want to be part of this, but the reality is that we are by allowing Shannon Airport to be used in this way.

The Government can talk about triple locks and the authority of the Dáil, but as Deputy Wallace explained this has been used to carry out a sleight of hand and undermine the wishes of the Irish people in this regard and therefore I fully support the Bill. It is absolutely necessary to be in accordance with the wishes of the Irish people and, critically, for us to adhere to our human rights obligations on a global scale and to be to the forefront of peacekeeping and active neutrality, and the proud tradition we had as an independent sovereign nation with an independent foreign policy and not one which slavishly follows the wishes of the United Nations and NATO.

See this speech in context