Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too am very concerned about this, having listened to the Minister of State's contribution and read his speech. It is proposed that we join up to these two projects just on a whim, as it were. This motion was slipped into the business today nicely when people are very busy with everything else. What would have happened if an election had been called? Would the Government have put down this motion for Tuesday night before we did anything else?

The motion relates to the joint procurement arrangement for EU SatCom Market and European Centre for Manual Neutralisation Capabilities, ECMAN, pursuant to section 2 of the Defence ( Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009. I am certainly not in favour of it. We have gone too far down the road of involvement with our European colleagues, who have not been much good to us in many other areas. If we were being attacked, I wonder would they come to our defence. They did not come much to our defence when we needed them in the banking crisis. Where were they? They could not be seen or found. They screwed us in the so-called bailout. They charged us 6% interest for it, while the IMF was charging us 3% interest for its funds. That shows us where our friends were.

However, this is too serious a matter. It would befit the Minister of State better if he were to go out today and meet the soldiers and their wives who are outside the gates of this House - I hope he met them - and take note of the ridiculous and shameful way our soldiers are being treated. They are being paid less then the minimum wage and expected to work 24-hour shifts, with €20 of a stipend to cover a 24-hour shift, but it would cost more than that to get a taxi to or from work. These are proud men with 40 years service. Their families, including fathers, sons, daughters, uncles and cousins, are involved in highlighting this issue. They have served in many countries with the United Nations, but not in this slimy slidderly way in which we are getting involved in these projects and putting them in danger in the name of so-called protecting our borders.

We have not had one proper debate in this House on the Syrian crisis, on the Iraq crisis or all the other crises. I tried several times to have such a debate. Deputies Noel Grealish, Kevin O'Keeffe and myself were allowed raised a Topical Issue on it, thanks to the Ceann Comhairle, on Holy Thursday evening, a very appropriate evening. No Government time was provided for it. We had no hope of securing a debate on the persecution of the Christians in the Middle East and minority Muslim sects. I was talking earlier to Deputies Wallace and Daly about their visit to Syria and perhaps we should all go and see what is going on there. I went to Lebanon. We can see what is happening.

We are respected all over the world for our neutrality but now we are being sucked into this vast industry. Some €200 million being spent on planes and all war missiles and €6 billion on protecting our borders. I do not know what will happen to our own Border between the North and the South. I got some hope today from a senior civil servant at the European committee when he said that things were looking more positive. We should mind our own business and let the people over there mind theirs. We should not be hanging on and giving them the stamp of approval that we would pony-up and send our soldiers out there. We should equip the ones at home and give them enough money to feed themselves so that they would not have to be living on family income supplement. They should be shown respect, instead of putting them into areas, and not knowing where they are going or what they are doing, or what we as a people are being sucked into without the people being consulted. This started off with the Lisbon treaty, followed by the Nice treaty, in respect of which the then Government went back to the people a second time to get it through. The Minister of State was not part of that Government, but others were.

I certainly am not going to take a lecture from Deputy Lisa Chambers with respect to her saying that she is disgusted with us not supporting this motion. She should support the soldiers at home as well. That would be more important than what she was criticising.

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