Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We will vote against the motion. We disagree very strongly with what is going on. As Deputies Boyd Barrett and Pearse Doherty have said, our neutrality is growing into a myth and has not really existed for a long time. The motion has been presented as a completely necessary formality that Ireland should agree to for Irish forces to take part in peacekeeping and training missions throughout the world, protected by the same legal structures as the armed forces of other nations, and that as a result of passing the motion, no armed force from another country will be stationed in Ireland or transit through Ireland. I will repeat "or transit through Ireland". The manner in which we can ignore the fact we have let a couple of million US troops pass through here on the way to causing untold damage in other regions beggars belief, as does the manner in which the Government deals with it from a legal perspective. Previously I have touched on the cable exposed by WikiLeaks from 2009, which highlighted the facts the Government is hiding. The Minister of State states foreign troops will not transit through Ireland and what is happening in Shannon with the US is an informal arrangement. I repeat: "an informal arrangement". I just hope that, whatever parties form the next Government, if there is anybody new apart from the three neoliberal parties, namely, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party, which are in favour of this, they insist on Shannon Airport being closed as a US military base.

It is as if our world leaders and their advisers and our intellectual elites find it easier to imagine another world exists than finding a way to stop imperialism, war, plunder and the other drivers of instability, such as global warming and extractive industries. The motion is presented as a common-sense legal formality. There is stuff about the status of the forces and the privileges, facilities and immunities that will apply to them when they are present on the territory of another state, while the larger debate is ignored, which is why are we integrating our forces further and further into NATO structures, taking part in ten PESCO training missions and the European defence fund, and presenting these moves as if it is business as usual for Ireland. Things are changing and I do not understand why this is happening now. The Minister of State has said that all of the other countries in Europe have signed up to this. As Deputy Boyd Barrett said, just about everybody in Europe at this stage is afraid of the US. This is why European countries are jumping at supporting the ludicrous idea that the US would accept a member of the opposition as the new President of Venezuela. All of the western European countries bar Italy are toeing the line and behaving like lapdogs to the US.

The Government is at pains to stress it is all about peacekeeping, learning new skills and getting group buying deals on expensive new hardware for our underpaid forces to use. The message in Europe is dramatically different. Jean-Claude Juncker has stated that by 2025 we need a fully fledged European defence union. He has stated we need it and NATO wants it. Damned right it does. Last month, Germany's defence minister stated that Europe's army is already taking shape and Europe needs to improve its ability to act on behalf of its own security. Not many politicians, particularly not our own, are very clear on from whom or what Europe needs to defend itself. Different bogeyman are hinted at. Russia is still thrown up as the big threat. Maybe if the US and NATO stopped impinging on the territory around Russia's border there would be a little bit more peace in the region. Maybe if the US, with the help of the EU, had not engaged in a coup in Ukraine, which has caused untold turmoil there since, there would be a bit more peace in the region. Where in God's name are we going with this stuff? Can we imagine the Russians getting involved in Mexico or Canada?

That is what is happening on the other side. Immigrants are invoked to make this argument. Where are those people coming from? We have facilitated the creation of immigrants. A minimum of 36 million people have been displaced by war. We helped to bomb those people and now we want to put up walls to stop them coming into Europe because we have destroyed the communities in which they lived. It is horrific.

All of the rationales fail to register the policies that have given rise to all of this. I refer to all of the efforts at regime change. What has that all been for? More than anything else, that has been to further the economic interests of the United States all over the world. Europe tags along because of its economic, political and now, sadly, military ties with America. Looking at what has happened in the world in the past 100 years - and this goes back to the situation in Venezuela - the Americans have interfered in 41 elections in Latin America. It is called democracy.

Why are we attaching ourselves to this nonsense? God help us. The anthropologist, Dr. Jason Hickel, pointed out recently that the most recent data show that more money flows from poor countries to rich countries than the other way around. That includes everything - aid, loans, foreign investment and remittances. Net outflows from poor countries amount to $2 trillion each year. Developing countries, or the global south, are enriching the developed world in the West. Those countries are already rich. We are penalising developing countries morning, noon and night and still raping the place like we are colonialists.

There is no sense to this. We throw aid at those developing countries as if that is a substitute for the fact we rob them blind. This free market extremism creates corruption, impossible economic climates and destabilises all of these regions. We should not be a part of all of this. When we talk about PESCO, the European Defence Fund and the NATO PfP, which should be called the NATO partnership for war, we are really speaking of pulling up the drawbridges to Europe and denying compassion to the people we have helped to bomb, starve and disenfranchise through our support for all of this imperialist activity and economic exploitation.

When we take part in training missions and operations to enhance our ability to police the borders of Europe, we are showing we agree with the nationalist xenophobic far-right ideologies this neoliberal philosophy has brought forth. That is what we are buying into. I am as fond of Europe as anybody but I am seriously worried about where it is going. I am also seriously worried about the role Ireland is playing and the way we are allowing ourselves to be dragged into these military alliances. It does not make any sense. Only 104 MEPs from a total of 751 MEPs voted to oppose regime change in Venezuela in the European Parliament last week. God help and save us. Where are we going?

The Government can cod people all it likes by twisting the language but the Irish people want to be neutral. They do not want to take part in war efforts. They do not want to take part in economic exploitation and impoverishing communities that have suffered long enough. There is no logic to this. It is not what the people want. I would love if the Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour parties took a serious look at where their political philosophy is taking Ireland. I am referring to this neoliberal hawkish approach and slavish adoration and subservience to the US which is continuing to destroy so many parts of the world and keep billions of people in poverty.

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