Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Like the previous speaker, I spoke on this matter at the committee, as I have done on a number of similar matters that seem to have come forward at a pace in recent years without any proper discussion about the nature of all these projects combined, as opposed to the dripfeed of individual projects, the subject of supposedly innocuous motions before the House. This is one of those European Defence Agency projects which the Minister of State has tried to present, both in this House and at the committee, as innocuous, inoffensive and beneficial to the Defence Forces, but that is not the case. This motion and the sum of all of those motions that have gone before it are further steps to ingrain our Defence Forces, our foreign policy, into the European military project, to make our Defence Forces more dependent on and more integrated into an EU army. I can hear Deputies say: "Foul, foul, there is no such thing". They should look around them, listen and see for themselves what those counties in Europe are saying.

The Minister of State is either blind or something else. Only last month we heard from France and Germany that they had signed a new agreement between themselves, and so they may. Part of that agreement, however, was to make our contribution to the emergence of a European army. We have heard Jean-Claude Juncker state that we will have an European army by 2021, or at the very latest, 2025. It is coming. We are on the edge of it. Every single one of these motions - and I include this motion - is a further step towards that inevitable aim. These are also further steps to make it more difficult for Irish soldiers and the Defence Forces to stand alone. Ireland should have nothing to do with this. Our magical, mystical triple-lock will not prevent us from being tainted with what the European Union will do in the future.

The Minister of State and his predecessors in Fianna Fáil have been doing the EU's bidding with this and other motions for quite a long time. They have moved further and further away from the laudable UN peacekeeping operations and have become an integral part of the European military apparatus. We have soldiers at the NATO headquarters, at the European military headquarters and we had soldiers on operations abroad that were not UN blue-hatted operations. Despite promising the contrary, under Fianna Fáil the State signed up to NATO's Partnership for Peace, PfP. We also signed up to the European Defence Agency, PESCO and Operation Sophia. There is no non-military rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea any more, because the EU demanded that they all leave. Now, poor creatures drowning in the Mediterranean Sea are rescued by the Libyan Coast Guard, from whom they are trying to flee, and they are put back into the hellhole prisons from which they have tried to get away or paid to escape.

Fortress Europe is being planned and facilitated by this arms race. This is part of that. Funds are being diverted away from the EU Structural Funds, including the European Social Fund, into grants for the arms industry. In many cases the majority of funds for research in those countries come from the EU funds. The European Commission is allocating €590 million to the European Defence Fund for 2020. It will increase to €13 billion thereafter. That is some diversion. That is an arms race and arms industry. It all fits into the militarisation agenda of the EU leaders and of the likes of Trump, the NATO leader who has demanded that European states spend an increasing amount on their military capacity.

Would it not be better to spend this on developing the capabilities of the Army here at home? It could develop the Defence Forces' morale, which is at rock bottom. It could pay proper wages. It could build up the Medical Corps again or the Engineering Corps, which had been decimated because of changes within the structures. It could deal with the legacy of Lariam and the Air Corps legacy. It could deal with the shortfall in the current capacity of the Army to send personnel abroad on operations or of ships to leave port to partake in maritime operations or of the air force to support the civil authorities when required.

I put it to the Minister of State that this is another one of those disgraceful motions and I will oppose it.

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