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

I commend Deputy Wallace on bringing this Bill forward. I also commend some of the people who have been campaigning for years on the issue of neutrality, trying to safeguard it and to campaign against the steady erosion of that neutrality and the stealth push by the political establishment in this country to involve us in military adventures, primarily those headed by the United States and Britain, over recent years. The people who deserve our tribute include Roger Cole from the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, whom Deputy Broughan has already mentioned, and Edward Horgan, who is in the Visitors Gallery, and John Landon. They have done fantastic work at Shannon in exposing our continued complicity with the US war machine at Shannon Airport. It is also worth mentioning John de Courcy Ireland, the anniversary of whose death will be next year. He was one of the founders of CND and was an absolutely fantastic campaigner for our neutrality right up until his death. He was involved in the protests against the Iraq war and every other military adventure or war that took place during his lifetime.

The Government's rejection of this Bill and their excuses for it are nothing short of pathetic. The claim that trying to enshrine our neutrality with reference to the Hague Convention is outmoded and not relevant to the modern situation because of the UN is preposterous given that the two worst examples of militarism that we have seen in recent years, the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, happened, with our complicity at Shannon Airport, outside the remit of the United Nations initially, at least. The idea that members of the United Nations do not engage in unilateral military action and the use of force to pursue political goals is nonsense. It is despicable that the Irish State was complicit in that slaughter.

I was involved in organising the 100,000-strong demonstration back in 2003. We predicted that the US-led war in Iraq would lead to about 50,000 deaths. We were described as scaremongers by the media and Government at the time and by the cheerleaders of US military action. In the event, about 1 million Iraqis died directly or indirectly as a consequence of the US military invasion. It says everything about our complicity in that invasion that the road between Baghdad airport and the city of Baghdad, where US troops were transported into Baghdad, was called "Route Irish". Everybody in Iraq, in the US military and everywhere else knew that Shannon was key to the logistical infrastructure required for the United States to wage a war that literally bombed Iraq back into the Stone Age. I hear the nauseating hypocrisy of people rightly condemning ISIS, but forgetting to mention that ISIS would not exist were it not for US aggression and the destruction the US-led coalition inflicted on the people of Iraq now spreading into Syria, devastating it and dragging it back to the Stone Age. Some of the most ancient civilisations in the world have been utterly devastated as a result of US-led military aggression and we continue to be complicit because our trade, economic, business and political relationship with the United States is more important to us than human rights, defending peace and trying to ensure a world without war and conflict, which were the founding principles of this State, or at least of the revolutionaries who fought for the independence of this State.

It is where the notion of neutrality came from in Ireland, precisely because we had raised a war of independence against empires who were involved in brutal military aggression that brought Europe to the brink of collapse at the turn of the century. It was against this background that the Hague Convention was developed.

Neutrality should not be simply about the minimum requirements of the Hague Convention, that is, not logistically supporting military action. Rather it should be in line with the anti-imperialist tradition of this country and the progressive revolutionary tradition that brought this State into being. It should also be about having an ethical foreign policy. In his speech, the Minister of State alluded to being concerned about the human rights of others, peace and stability as well as fairness and justice throughout the world. One example that reveals everything about the callous lack of concern of this Government for those things, including the human rights of our own citizens, is the case of Ibrahim Halawa. He is going on trial in Egypt on Sunday and faces possible execution by the military junta that has hijacked the Arab spring and is now in power. Essentially, a new Mubarak regime is back in power in Egypt. It is passing mass death sentences against political opponents. One of these is an Irish citizen, Ibrahim Halawa. I have just come from a press conference with Ibrahim's sisters. They pointed out how he has been tortured viciously and cruelly by that regime and the fact that the Irish Government has stalled, dragged its feet and has refused to come out in a clear and unequivocal way to demand that Ibrahim should be released and that the regime that is supposedly putting him on trial is not capable of delivering any kind of fairness or justice either to its citizens or to one of our citizens, Ibrahim Halawa, whose life is threatened. He is on trial on Sunday and he could have an execution sentence passed against him simply for being involved in peaceful protests against the Egyptian regime.

I appeal to the Minister of State and to the Taoiseach, if he is listening to the debate. Why has the Taoiseach not come out publicly and forcefully, demand that this Irish citizen should be released from imprisonment, that the show trial and trumped-up charges which have been imposed on him should be lifted and that he should be released? Why has the Taoiseach not done that? Then, I thought about beef and the fact that in December of last year the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Coveney, announced that live meat exports were resuming to Egypt and indeed to Libya, another prize regime involved in the most brutal suppression of its citizens. I wonder whether that is the reason. Of course that was the reason we never said a word of criticism against Saddam Hussein or his brutal dictatorship, because Larry Goodman was selling rotten beef to the rotten regime of Saddam Hussein. Probably, Larry Goodman is involved in selling beef. I am unsure whether it is rotten but it is certainly going to a rotten regime in Egypt, which is brutally suppressing civil rights and persecuting and crushing any dissent. Yet, one of our citizens is there facing possible execution in a country where justice is not possible.

What is the official position of the Irish Government? It is to say that this citizen should have a fair trial. Yet, Amnesty International, every human rights organisation in the world and most governments in the world have acknowledged that there is no possibility of a fair trial for anyone in Egypt, whether for its citizens or any other citizens. The country is run by a military junta engaged in brutal suppression, executions and shootings on a daily basis of their political opponents as well as in the torture of thousands of people who are currently in prison simply for uttering criticism of the regime. One of our citizens is there. If Ibrahim Halawa, an Irish citizen born in this country, had the name Paddy Murphy, would the Taoiseach have made a statement to the effect that he should be released immediately? Of course he would. Yet, we have not had any public approbation or any forceful statement from the Taoiseach. I appeal to the Minister of State and the Taoiseach to make such a statement before Sunday. They should demand of the Egyptian regime that it release Ibrahim Halawa and stop the brutal suppression of human rights that the Al-Sisi dictatorship - effectively that is what is in place now - is inflicting on its own citizens.

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