Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ar an gcéad dul síos, ba mhaith liom mo mhíle buíochas a ghabháil leis an Teachta Wallace as ucht an reachtaíocht seo a thabhairt os comhair na Dála. Ba mhaith liom a rá freisin go mbeidh Sinn Féin ag tabhairt tacaíocht don Bhille seo ar an Dara Céim.

This is the second neutrality Bill to come before the Dáil this month. My colleague, Deputy Seán Crowe, brought forward a Bill to enshrine neutrality in the constitution on 6 March. This Bill was regrettably and shamefully voted down by Labour, Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael. This is unsurprising as they have been part of successive Governments which have undermined Irish neutrality and sold it off piece by piece. This Bill is similar in that it calls for a referendum on neutrality, albeit this one is focused on ensuring Ireland’s neutrality status adheres to the section (V) of the 1907 Hague Convention. A referendum on neutrality would be hugely beneficial and worthwhile because Ireland has à la carteneutrality.

In fact, Fine Gael’s Deputy Eoghan Murphy, during the debate on Deputy Seán Crowe’s Bill said: “Ireland is not a neutral State and never has been”. Many on the Government’s benches are NATO-philes and would have us in NATO in the morning if they had the opportunity. Successive Governments have repeatedly stated Ireland is a neutral State but from the point of view of Irish law neutrality has no operational parameters or any necessary legal status. Accordingly, Sinn Féin appeals once again to the Government to allow a neutrality Bill to pass Second Stage and to begin to openly and honestly debate Ireland’s policy of neutrality.

A referendum would bring greater clarity to this State’s neutrality policy which has become blurred, distorted, and riddled with doublespeak. The biggest damage to a debate is when people mutate words so they no longer have their original meaning.

The Government’s Green Paper on Defence wrongly suggests that Irish neutrality has its origins in the Second World War. In fact, the Irish impulse to neutrality well predates this. Sinn Féin’s support for neutrality is a product of a developed and coherent Irish republican position stretching back over 200 years when Wolfe Tone called for Irish neutrality in the face of an impending war between Britain and Spain in the 1790s. In 1914, James Connolly also founded the Irish Neutrality League and the women activists of Cumann Na mBan republished Wolfe Tone’s Spanish Warpamphlet in 1915.

In the Department of Foreign Affairs most recent 57-page policy paper, The Global Island, neutrality is only mentioned twice. The Hague Peace Conference agreed the substance of neutrality and it is basically captured in first two articles of the convention. These read:

Article 1: The territory of neutral Powers is inviolable.

Article 2: Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral Power.

Yet since the creation of this State, Governments have chosen to focus the requirement of Irish neutrality on not being an active participate in belligerent military alliances. However, a Fianna Fáil led Government signed Ireland up to NATO’s ironically named Partnership for Peace, PfP, which is generally seen as a stepping stone to full NATO membership. NATO is without doubt one of the most hostile military alliances Ireland could join. A Fianna Fáil Government put us half way there without asking the people. Decisions like this should not be left solely in the hands of a Government but come directly from the people.

While Bunreacht na hÉireann contains a rhetorical commitment to the ideals of peace, friendly co-operation and pacific settlement in Article 29, nothing in this obliges Ireland to be neutral or prohibits the Government of the day from departing from that policy. All we have in place is the triple lock which grants some democratic oversight to the deployment of Irish troops abroad. It basically amounts to a voluntary alienation of that power of military deployment to the UN Security Council which is highly politicised and undemocratic.

Successive Governments have also ignored the issue of helping a belligerent country to wage war. Austria refused landing facilities to the United States during the Iraq war on the grounds that this was incompatible with its policy of neutrality. Our Government did so without a second thought and despite the fact over 100,000 people marched on the streets of this city to oppose the war.

The recent and ongoing court case of Deputies Wallace and Clare Daly, have exposed how Shannon Airport is used by the US military in complete contradiction to these Hague convention articles. Evidence given during their cases by military experts, clearly details how foreign militaries transport weaponry on aircrafts going through Shannon and that the civilian airport has become a virtual forward airbase of the US military.

We are not talking about isolationism, we are talking about positive neutrality. We live in a world where half the population lives in poverty, where one person in eight is suffering from malnutrition, and where poverty kills approximately 19 people every minute of every day of every month. At the same time US$1,738 billion is spent globally on military expenditure. There must be something wrong with that. Greater military expenditure is definitely not the solution to ensure we live in a safer and more equal world. Instead, we need to challenge the very structures that cause poverty, food insecurity, and conflict. Neutrality is not some attempt to abstain from international affairs. To so do would be the wrong thing from a moral standpoint and in every other way. The positive neutrality we support calls for a redoubling of our efforts to focus on working with countries to implement global targets on issues such as poverty reduction, hunger, land rights, climate change, citizen participation, economic equality and governmental accountability. It is only through progress on those fronts, rather than an increase in military spending, that we will make the world a better and safer place.

The Government should allow this Bill to pass Second Stage. In refusing to do so, it is killing the debate on this very important issue. It is long past the time that power was handed back to Irish people to decide on the country's future and whether neutrality should be part of that core policy. It is also long past time that we handed back to the people the opportunity for them to define neutrality, rather than for the Government to mutate the wording. Bunreacht na hÉireann is the people's document, and we should let them decide if they want it amended it on this hugely important issue.

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