Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to put on record my sincere thanks to the Government for allocating time for these statements at my request and that of Deputy Eoghan Murphy. It is vitally important that the House discuss this matter. There are varying estimates of how many nuclear weapons there are on planet Earth. There are between 13,500 and 14,500 of them, going on any solid academic basis, of which 9,500 are considered worthy of being immediately active or capable of being activated in a short period. In the 1980s, there was a peak of 70,000 nuclear warheads on planet Earth. To think that because they are produced in such a number we are somehow safer and that this is somehow a good news story would be to totally miss the point. Nuclear weapons have become more sophisticated and more powerful. They are capable of as much death and destruction as they ever have been, such as on those two August days in 1945 in Japan.

We have a proud history in this country of our work on disarmament. That was most clearly crystallised in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, NPT, that opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. As previously set out by the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and Deputy Eoghan Murphy, we have continued that approach right through the years, including through the New Agenda Coalition in the 1990s and our work on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. These weapons are a threat. They have never been a deterrent; they have always been an existential threat to our very existence. I am proud of Ireland's role on this issue. We sit or stand in the Chamber and hold the Government to account from the benches on this side of the House with regard to issues in respect of which we perceive it has not done enough or has not done it correctly, but this is not one of those cases. Through successive Governments and successive generations of a committed diplomatic corps, we have a very proud history on the issues of non-proliferation and disarmament. That is known worldwide and needs to be known to a greater degree in this country.

The NPT is not a perfect treaty. What I perceive to be some of its successes are in the area of non-proliferation. In the 1960s, there were dozens of countries with nuclear power that did not then make the leap to nuclear weapons although they could have done so. Countries such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Taiwan ended nascent nuclear weapons programmes and some of the former Soviet bloc countries gave up nuclear weapons. The NPT and the norm it created was a key part of those decisions and that is something of which we can be very proud.

However, Article 6, dealing with the area of disarmament, is a weakness. It has been a weakness for 50 years. That is why we need the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Three states, namely, India, Pakistan and Israel, have been outside the treaty and have developed and held nuclear weapons for a long period. They have been joined by North Korea in the past four years. There are immediate proliferation concerns regarding countries such as Iran and Syria. These are real concerns. The International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, is pursuing investigations with which these countries are not complying. I know certain persons like to flirt with these regimes in some kind of misguided recognition of anti-imperialism, but their holding or developing of nuclear weapons is as unethical as those of the United States and Russia.

This is a zero-sum situation. Nuclear weapons are wrong. They cut to the very heart of insecurity on this planet. No other weapon has the capacity to devastate, kill and destroy not just human life, but flora, fauna and the entire environment in which we live. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will enter into force on 22 January 2021. On the first page of the treaty, it acknowledges "the ethical imperatives for nuclear disarmament and the urgency of achieving and maintaining a nuclear-weapon-free world". That sums it up. This is an ethical imperative.

It is the right thing to do. No country should hold nuclear weapons. We must push for a nuclear weapons-free world. Ireland has led in that regard. This small country has a proud and strong tradition of leading on this and it should continue to do so. It is urgent and an ethical imperative.

I will conclude with one point. There has been much talk about the negative aspects of social media in the past couple of weeks in this country. I advise people to follow the disarmament Twitter handle in the Department of Foreign Affairs if they want to see the real work that goes into reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world, as well as all the other conventional and non-conventional weapons. People should follow that account and see what our country does daily and weekly. They will be proud of the work that is done. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for this debate.

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