Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Green Party is opposed to Ireland's entry into PESCO. It runs contrary to Ireland's tradition as a neutral non-aligned country and it will not serve our people or armed forces well in the great work that the latter have done representing us in peace missions overseas. We regret that the process by which approval is being sought - at incredibly short notice and without proper debate or committee hearings at which we could have real consultation - casts a shadow on what is being done.

Regardless, we disagree in principle with the approach that is being taken. While we recognise that we need to train and better resource our military and ensure that it has joint operability with the militaries of other countries on peacekeeping missions, our contention, having read the notification on PESCO and the founding documents that have been set out, is that this goes far beyond that. This is about the building up of a military capability and industrial armaments capability, which will not provide security in the long run. From the documents, it is clear that PESCO is primarily focused on the security issue that people perceive in our relationship with bordering areas, particularly with north Africa in the south, the Middle East and so on, where there are increasing tensions and difficulties.

Any assessment of what has been done by European nations and others in recent years would show that the approach that has been taken is not working. In fact, it has increased the level of insecurity and threat rather than decreased it. The example of Libya has been mentioned a number of times. European governments, primarily Britain and France, engaged in a regime change operation, ostensibly to create a more secure state, but left that state in complete anarchy. There has been considerable conflict in Libya as well as conditions of slavery applying to migrant peoples who are locked in that country. There has been a breakdown of order.

The approach of using heavy military equipment - armaments, aircraft and so on - to try to enforce a peace simply does not work. When speaking with a friend who had been working at a high level in Afghanistan for the past ten years and was in regular contact with American generals there, I asked her about their sense of how that approach had gone. She told me that most of those generals would honestly admit that, if given the choice, they would employ 1,000 aid workers before they would ever deploy a military division and that the old method of applying force through the use of large armaments in an attempt to keep the peace did not work. It has not been our way in our successful peacekeeping operations.

The Government regularly says that PESCO is about peacekeeping and increasing our ability to engage in such missions, but the rationale for PESCO as set out in the documents is the opposite. The notification documents read: "The project portfolio shall reflect an appropriate balance between projects which are more in the area of capability development and those who are more in the area of operations and missions". The Minister stated that the 2% target only related to research expenditure, but there is a clear commitment that any government partaking in the process will ensure that its expenditure on what is called "defence investment", which I take to mean the development of an armaments capability, which is involved in a military form of peacekeeping that will not work, will increase to 20% over successive years.

People have claimed that this is not a move towards the further development of NATO, but I will refer Members who may be considering voting in favour of the motion to the speech given by President Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, in his state of the European Union address, where he was again categoric and explicit on the need to develop a European defence union and that this would be in NATO's interests. Time and again, the Secretary General of NATO welcomed the introduction of PESCO. All parties are saying that this is effectively Europe stepping in to replace or complement NATO in order to provide our main security-peacekeeping system. That approach will not work and is not our approach as a country, given our historical position of non-aligned neutrality. That may seem abstract or difficult to measure in terms of what value it brings, but the Irish people know it and treasure it, and when they find out after the fact that we have taken this strategic decision, they will say that it is not the way that we should have gone.

While we need to build up the Defence Forces and ensure that our soldiers, sailors and air personnel are better paid and have the right equipment, none of that means that we have to make this commitment. Denmark is an example of a similar country that has gone in a different direction. No Deputy has said that Denmark is terrible or failing to live up to its European commitments. It maintains its strength by having a certain independence.

The European Union would be stronger by having a certain level of diversity in terms of its approach to security and defence issues, in particular.

Europe has a history which we cannot ignore or avoid. It has been one of military adventurerism, in particular in North Africa, the Middle East and border areas. What guarantees do we have that the tradition we are committing to, in terms of the ramping up of expenditure on armament and capabilities, will not be one which dominates in this new mechanism? I am very much a supporter of the European Union and I am glad we are a member state. I believe this is a time where we have to have multilateral co-operation and be a leading player in moving the Union forward. However, I do not want to see that happening in the area of defence spending and militarisation. What Europe brings to the world is a more diplomatic and political, less offensive, process. Ireland, as an independent, neutral and non-aligned country, could be a voice on the edge of Europe calling out on a regular basis to say, "Not in this way".

I am constrained by time, given that I am sharing time with Deputy Healy. We are rushing this through and it appears that Fianna Fáil will agree to the motion. I would like the Government to commit to full transparency on all expenditure, decisions and information on which projects Ireland will become involved in and that the Dáil is informed on a regular basis about what is happening. The process should not be hidden and decisions made in corridors in Brussels which we know nothing about. It would be a tragedy and mistake for us to sign up to this today, but let us at least make sure that the Dáil has full transparency and accountability in regard to what is unfortunately happening in our name.

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