Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We do not want to be involved in any prettifying of the EDA, which is a peddler of death, or any presentation of the agency as it has been presented by the Government. The Government's statement in the White Paper on Defence that the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces are committed "to improving the potential for Irish enterprise to compete for Defence contracts" means that it wants a cut of this peddling of death. As Deputy Boyd Barrett has said, the agency exists to promote the military-industrial complex in Europe. That is what it is. We should have nothing to do with the EDA.

The context for this debate is very important. I remind the House that the idea that there was a process towards militarisation in the EU, leading to a European army, used to be ridiculed. The President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who is the most powerful person in the EU, said last week following the election of Donald Trump that "we have to do this ourselves, which is why we need a new approach to building a European security union with the end goal of establishing a European army". That is what is happening here. EU Ministers agreed at yesterday's meeting to create a mini military headquarters, in effect, and to have joint rapid reaction forces. They said that battle groups could form the core of the new multifunctional civilian and military capabilities.

As I have said previously in the Dáil, there are divisions not between those who want war and those who want peace, but between those who want an independent European army and those who want to be linked to NATO. Those divisions among people who are in favour of further militarisation are going to come out in the context of Donald Trump and the idea of NATO being downgraded. For this precise reason, a number of groups have called for a protest at the US Embassy at 6 p.m. on Thursday. It will be a protest against Donald Trump and against the policies of war and racism, etc. These issues are relevant in America and here. Last weekend, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste represented the Government at events commemorating the lost generation of people who were victims of the First World War. Working-class people learned from that war that the danger of inter-imperialist rivalry is that they are the people who get butchered. However, the Government has not learned a thing.

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