Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In a debate on EU battle groups last year, the then Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, stated:

Ireland's traditional policy of military neutrality is unaffected by our participation ... We are not and will not become part of any military alliance or permanent military formation. We will not enter into any mutual defence arrangement.

How then do we explain Ireland's membership of the EU battlegroup or our partnership with NATO? Fine Gael, supported by Fianna Fáil, further ensured the Dáil that any deployment of an Irish contribution as part of the German battlegroup will be subject to the triple lock of the Government, the Dáil and a UN mandate before deployment occurs. How do we explain the fact that in May this year The Sunday Timesreported that 300 soldiers from Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Sweden had taken part in 18 days of war games on Salisbury plain in England in an EU battlegroup led by the British army? If Dáil Éireann agreed in 2015 to the deployment of troops in an EU battlegroup led by Germany, how did we end up deploying troops in war games in a battlegroup led by the British army? If there is no Dáil oversight on decision making on deployment of troops to EU battlegroups how can we trust in the ongoing commitment of the Government to provide the protection afforded by the triple lock? The ongoing alliance of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil with the military formations in the EU and NATO directly contradicts our neutrality, associates us with aggression abroad, particularly in the Middle East, and will endanger Irish troops who take part in genuine peace keeping missions by undermining their claim to a genuine neutrality.

Ireland should withdraw from the EU battlegroups, NATO partnerships including the use of Shannon by the US, and, as Denmark has done, from further participation in US militarisation.

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