Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to begin by making it crystal clear that the use of chemical weapons in any circumstance is completely unacceptable and those who engage in their use need to be charged and brought before the appropriate international courts. Ireland must also protect its people from any outside threat. The expulsion of Russian diplomats from Ireland operating as hostile intelligence officers is a more than suitable action to be pursued if they are behind the attack in England on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. However, the difficulty I have is that we have yet to be given any independently-verified evidence to underpin the decision to expel a Russian diplomat from Ireland in response to Salisbury. Such a significant and dramatic Irish foreign policy decision should not be dictated by the concerns of a foreign security agency but by Irish security and informed analysis. Sinn Féin therefore does not support the Government's decision to expel a Russian diplomat and we believe this is a further erosion of Ireland's neutrality and independent foreign policy.

Last week, during the pre-European Council statements in this Chamber, the Taoiseach said what happened in Salisbury "was a reprehensible and loathsome attack" and he condemned "the use of chemical weapons and assassinations wherever they happen and whoever commits them".

This was welcome and I fully support the Taoiseach in this regard.

Yet on day one of the European Council meeting in Brussels, having listened to Theresa May he told reporters that he agreed with the UK’s assessment that it is highly likely Russian authorities were behind the Salisbury attack and he was undertaking a review of the Russian embassy’s activities. He provided no evidence for this policy shift. We do not know what compelling information the British Prime Minister gave, but it seems clear to me that Irish foreign policy is now being decided around tables in Brussels and not in Dublin. This completely undermines Irish neutrality and our independent foreign policy.

I have repeatedly spoken out against the increased federalisation and militarisation of the EU and its so-called Common Foreign and Security Policy. This continues to blur and undermine our neutrality and sovereignty. It will worry many in Ireland that this decision seems to have been based on information emanating from a British security service. Britain’s spies, agents and security operatives have a long and bloody record in Ireland. They have been involved in a dirty war and linked to countless killings of Irish citizens right across this island, a horrific legacy that they have so far refused to acknowledge and which continues to impact on the victims and survivors to this very day.

Considering that the Taoiseach has decided to base Irish foreign policy on the information a British security service provided to him about the death of one of its double agents, perhaps it is well past time for him also to ask it to release the files and information it has on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings which killed 32 Irish citizens, along with one French citizen and one Italian citizen who were living in Ireland. They were carried out by the UVF with the full assistance of the British security services. There have been three Dáil motions calling on the British Government to release the files it has on these bombings, yet it continues to ignore, stall and deny its knowledge and involvement in these attacks.

Now it would appear that we are letting the same shadowy security agencies give direction to Irish foreign policy. These are the same securocrats who ran agents in loyalist paramilitary organisations, like Gary Haggerty whose case went before the courts in Belfast recently and has revealed his part in 202 criminal offences including at least five known murders. We are expected to rely on and trust the information coming from a foreign security service that has been involved in countless murders of Irish people and whose information led to the illegal Iraq war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

We are expected to trust Theresa May and Boris Johnson on this issue, despite the fact that Russian oligarchs and their associates have registered donations of more than £820,000 to the Conservative Party since she became Prime Minister and he became Foreign Secretary. The British Government said the Salisbury attack was the first offensive use of a chemical agent in Europe since the Second World War. This will come as a bit of a surprise to many former Irish republican prisoners in Long Kesh who were gassed by chemicals that the British Government secretly authorised for use in prisons. Many have since developed cancer and some have died from all sorts of diseases linked to the use of chemicals.

It shows complete disdain for this Parliament and for Ireland’s independence that the Taoiseach can announce this policy shift to reporters in Brussels, but keep Deputies and the public in the dark. I do not know who used chemical nerve agent on the Skripals, but I do know that the Irish Government’s response will negatively impact on this country and its people as it undermines our neutrality and our independent foreign policy.

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