Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No country has ratified the convention for more than 50 years. I say that for the benefit of Deputy Clare Daly. I repeat that this is a convention ratified by 33 countries, 13 of them members of NATO. The Deputy may say that we are parroting - to use her phrase - words that were used three weeks ago, but I respectfully submit to this House that the message is still the same and it is no less potent by its repetition. I wish to inform Deputy Clare Daly, through the Chair, that no country has ratified the convention for more than 50 years and only three have ratified it since the conclusion of the First World War. I speak specifically and respectfully to Deputy Wallace's Bill in response. One could ask why that is so. It is because the convention is no longer relevant to the contemporary world. It has been made redundant by subsequent legal agreements, namely, by the General Treaty of 1928 and by the UN Charter of 1945.

Regardless of all of the issues that are honestly submitted by Members opposite in regard to issues of neutrality - I refer to issues relating to Palestine, Cuba and whether Cabinet members are for or against NATO - and again in the context of the Bill before the House, we respond accordingly and efficiently to what has been raised in the provisions in the proposed Bills. The Government believes in a modern constitution for a modern Ireland that takes an active role in a modern world. We see no point in according constitutional status to a convention which is no longer relevant; which in large measure has been overtaken by developments in international law; which refers to telegraph and telephone cables and to the erection of wireless telegraphy stations; and which has not attracted a single new adherent in more than half a century. I realise that my time is up. While the Government does not support the Bill, that is not to say that we do not respect the spirit in which the Bill has been introduced. We believe the aim of it, which is to seek to instil within the Constitution the 1907 Hague Convention, is not the pertinent way to deal with the entirety of the issue of neutrality.

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