Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate and fully support the Bill. The Minister of State has left the House. If one wanted to be generous about his contribution at the start of this debate, one could think the Government was presenting a reasoned argument. If one did not know very much about what was happening, it might seem the Government was trying to balance all of these difficult issues to arrive at the most practical position on neutrality. Then one gets to the second last paragraph of his contribution in which he talks about the Government granting permission for the use of Shannon Airport as a de factoUS military base. He said:

Successive Governments have made overflight and landing facilities available at Shannon Airport to the United States for well over 50 years. These arrangements are governed by strict conditions, including that the aircraft must be unarmed, carry no arms, ammunition or explosives, that they do not engage in intelligence and that the flights do not form part of military exercises or operations. We impose these conditions to ensure compatibility between these arrangements and our neutrality.

That gives the lie to the Government’s contribution to this debate. We have never checked any of the flights transiting through Shannon Airport. We do not know and do not want to know. We have turned a blind eye to it. A total of 2.5 million US troops have travelled through Shannon Airport on their way to Afghanistan and Iraq, as has been outlined by other Members, to kill civilians in these countries. Shannon Airport has also been tied to dozens of CIA rendition flights on which prisoners illegally seized in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan were shipped to various black sites in Europe and Asia and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, yet we do nothing. As Deputies Mick Wallace and Clare Daly said, we have given permission for thousands of tonnes of armaments to be carried in overflights, about which we never ask. They said we had given permission for cluster bombs to be flown through Irish airspace on their way to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to kill civilians there. In 2008 we passed a Cluster Munitions And Anti-Personnel Mines Act 2008 to instruct State investment agencies to divest from investing in munitions companies involved in the manufacture of cluster bombs, yet we give the Americans an exemption to overfly the State with cluster bombs on their way to do their deadly work.

The Government’s argument is disingenuous and duplicitous. It is afraid of the answer it would get from the people if it allowed the proposal for a referendum to be debated by them because they would back it very strongly and forcefully. Deputy Willie Penrose’s contribution on behalf of the Labour Party was thought-provoking and it would be interesting to tease out the Bill further on Committee Stage. It is hard, however, to escape the reality that when the Labour Party was in government, it voted down the Bill and did not present the same reasoned arguments. It was a lost opportunity.

I was struck by the similarity between the Government's and Fianna Fáil's contributions in terms of the arguments and language used. They could have been written by the same person, with a few tweaks along the way. The message is that a referendum to enshrine neutrality in the Constitution would signal that we were withdrawing from international relations and going to become an insular country, but is far from the way it would be. Why would the fact that we had enshrined neutrality in the Constitution mean we were withdrawing from international relations? It would, in fact, probably increase our credibility in international relations. If we were proactive, stopped the use of Shannon Airport as an American military base and stopped granting permission for overflights to transport armaments to war zones, we would strengthen our standing in the international community. The problem for the Government is that it would not strengthen it with the people to whom it wants to cosy up - the Americans, the British and the French, all former colonial powers that want to bomb people into oblivion around the world. That is why the Government does not want the Bill to move forward or have the proposal for a referendum to be discussed or see the light of day.

The Bill needs to be changed and it would be interesting to see it being tweaked along the lines the Labour Party outlined. I have concerns about the wording "save without the assent of Dáil Éireann for participation in war zones". We have that already in what the Government calls the "triple lock". In effect, it is a dual lock because all one needs is a UN resolution and then one has the Executive which controls the Dáil anyway. In effect, if the Executive goes for it, the Dáil will go for it as well. The triple lock is actually a dual lock and that is all we have in terms of protecting the citizens of the country and our neutrality. The Government amendment states that the triple lock comes into play when it is proposed to deploy more than 12 military personnel. It is interesting that we had 12 military personnel deployed in Afghanistan for the duration of that invasion there. I wonder if the figure of 12 was useful because it meant that deployment did not have to be endorsed by the House; not that such an endorsement would have caused the Government a real problem other than the slight embarrassment of having to go through a vote on it.

We should move forward with the Bill. Obviously, Fianna Fáil will combine with its coalition partner to defeat it, which is regrettable. These Bills will keep coming forward and we will get to a situation where a Government on those benches will stand up for neutrality and place it in the Constitution.

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