Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is really disingenuous of the Minister to suggest that the decision to expel a Russian diplomat does not impinge on our neutrality. Anybody looking objectively at what is happening globally would say there is an escalating confrontation between the United States, Europe and Russia. That is clear. Some of the most horrific outcomes of the new cold war and the confrontation between the major power blocs have been played out in Syria, with disastrous consequences. We are under no illusions about what Mr. Putin represents. He is an authoritarian warmonger who is, frankly, capable of anything. We saw what he is capable of in eastern Ghouta with the use of chemical weapons there. Interestingly, when Deputy Gino Kenny and I asked the Government last week in a Topical Issue debate if it would call in the Russian ambassador to answer questions, never mind expel anybody, on what Russia is doing in eastern Ghouta, it was ignored. The Government did not want to know and did not want to do it.

This week, apparently, we must expel a diplomat on the word of British intelligence and because our European partners are doing that as well. When I was a child and I did something stupid, my parents used to ask, "If everybody else stuck their head in the oven, would you do it too?". Obviously, one would not, but now we are sticking our head into the oven on the basis that everybody else is doing it. This is the Minister's argument. We are sticking our head into the oven of an escalating new cold war between two major power blocs which has already had disastrous consequences in Syria and the Middle East and which is likely to escalate further. The Minister says seriously that this does not impinge on our neutrality. Neutrality is not just about deployment of military forces, it is also about not taking sides in a cold war when neither side is up to anything good. We know Russia has a rotten record and a rotten agenda. We also know that the US-western bloc has a rotten record in Syria, funnelling money through Saudi Arabia to Islamist groups and also trying to manipulate the situation for its own purposes.

As has already been said about the British intelligence service, these are the people who made up complete lies about yellowcake for enriched uranium being sold by Niger to Iraq. It was a total fabrication by the British intelligence services, as were the weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be in Iraq to justify the war there and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. Consider the files British intelligence still refuses to give to our Government about its involvement in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. There were no diplomatic sanctions for that. One can go through the list.

Now, on the basis of no evidence, we decide to expel a Russian diplomat. There will be ramifications. That puts us on one side of this conflict and it has implications. There will be retaliation but, more generally, we are on the slippery slope to saying that we are going to agree with whatever Europe and Britain say in this escalating confrontation with Russia because we are part of the European Union. That is not neutrality or an independent foreign policy. In reality, it is putting our citizens in danger. Just as we have long argued that facilitating US troops at Shannon Airport to conduct unjust and criminal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere undermines our neutrality and increases the likelihood of us being targeted, taking a side in this way also increases that likelihood.

I fully support an ethical foreign policy that might involve expelling diplomats, but it must be consistent. If it is about abhorrence of the use of chemical weapons, expel the Russians for what they did in eastern Ghouta. Expel the Israelis for successive violations of international law and human rights and for the commission of atrocities against the Palestinian people and expel the UK diplomats for refusing to share their files on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. We must be consistent. There is no consistency in this. We are taking sides in a new cold war and it is a big mistake.

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