Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State knows I do not agree with this at all. The Europeans knew what they were talking about when they called these "battle groups". The word "peace" is nowhere there.

I was not here for the debate on Mali last week but I find it reprehensible that we have any involvement there. All we are doing there is backing up western financial imperialism in Africa. The French are up to their nuts in the area and there is no gain for the people of the region. It is all about financial gain for the French. The Americans and others are there as well, as are the Chinese and Russians. I do not agree with any of them exploiting that region for financial gain and we are facilitating it by sending troops there. There is no fairness or logic to doing that.

Deputy Brendan Ryan said that we are not sending people into battles of aggression. I am sorry, and it is nothing personal, but I strongly disagree. I do not take any comfort from the triple lock given that the Government of the day will decide if it feels like going further and more aggressively. We have seen what the Government of the day has been doing since 2001 in Shannon. Sadly, Fine Gael objected to it before going into government but went along with it in government. I strongly disagree with the fact that Shannon is being used by the US military to cause terrible destruction worldwide.

More than 60 million people are now displaced because of war. The militarisation of the planet has gone off the Richter scale and we are now looking at a gradual militarisation of Europe. It is very dangerous. Money is now being taken from environmental projects in Europe to go towards military subsidy. That is only subsidising the arms industry. The lobbyists from that industry are wearing out the carpets in Europe to get what they want.

Deputy Jack Chambers named a number of so-called neutral countries that have also signed up to these battle groups. Unfortunately, the number of countries in Europe that are prepared to stand up to the might of the military complex is zero. We will take no credit from being in the same boat as them.

This is the wrong path and that is an enormous problem.

Everybody seems to be interested in the environment all of a sudden, but there is no entity on the planet causing more problems for the environment than the United States military and its 4,800 bases worldwide. There is no logic to us having anything to do with military expansion in Europe. It is a huge mistake and not what the people want.

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