Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I too would like to thank Deputy Duncan Smith for his initiative in suggesting this debate and I thank the House for accepting it. I also thank the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Simon Coveney, for his contribution. This year, 2020, is a landmark year for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and all the efforts that have gone into that noble quest for so long. It has been 75 years since the use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the Minister noted, it has been 50 years since the NPT came into force. This year, 2020, was meant to see the tenth review conference for that treaty, but it was postponed until next year because of Covid-19. Thankfully, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will be able to enter into force next year. We have reached the number of ratifications required for that treaty to enter into force in January of next year. This is a landmark year and it is important to take the time to mark these things in our national Parliament.

It is also important to do so in the context of what will happen next year when Ireland takes its seat at the United Nations Security Council. This is an incredible opportunity for the country, one for which people have been preparing for quite some time. I congratulate everyone who was involved in the campaign to win that seat. I will admit that as a Minister in the Government at the time I was sceptical, but I am very happy to have been proven wrong on this occasion. I wish everyone involved the very best of luck in the next two years.

There is no doubt that our time on the Security Council will be dominated by the events of the day, conflicts and human security issues that are ongoing and new threats that may arise. Notwithstanding the contribution we will make to those challenges, it is also important that we have a fundamental objective to pursue while we are on the Security Council. Our effort around nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation should be one of those objectives. I think this because of our history, as outlined by the Minister, but also because of our future.

Our commendable efforts towards nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament are not well known in this country. When people think of Ireland and the United Nations they think of the blue helmets, and rightly so. However, it was only three years after we had joined the UN in the 1950s that we tabled the first resolution against what was then termed the dissemination of nuclear weapons. The motion known as the "Irish resolution" led directly to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The NPT was not the first arms control treaty, but because of its importance it became the framework for international arms control since then. It was not a perfect treaty or a complete treaty. Article VI conferred an obligation on the nuclear weapon powers to pursue disarmament. It pointed towards a framework, but that framework still had to be built. That framework has followed almost 50 years later in the form of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We have remained at the vanguard of non-proliferation efforts through the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995, the establishment of the New Agenda Coalition in the 1990s, the 13 steps which were identified in 2000, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and our funding of the very important work of NGOs, agencies and civil society bodies in this area.

The further we get from the terrible events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the more the threat diminishes in our minds. Counter-intuitively, the threat is actually increasing. In 1945, some scientists who were involved in the Manhattan Project, which built the first nuclear weapon, established the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. This was a way for scientists involved in this area to share knowledge and to highlight the threat posed by the atomic age. Two years later they came up with the Doomsday Clock, which indicates the level of threat we face from nuclear weapons. The clock's proximity to midnight indicates how serious the threat is. In 2007, when I was still working at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, the clock was at five minutes to midnight. That is how serious the threat was. Today, it is at only 100 seconds to midnight. Midnight is closer now than it has ever been. It is important to reflect on that for a moment. The threat posed by nuclear weapons to our entire civilisation is closer than it was at the height of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the zenith of the Abdul Qadeer Khan network, or throughout developments after 9/11 and those still unresolved regional conflicts that have nuclear dimensions.

Because of that fact, because of that level of threat, with 100 seconds until midnight, we have to ask ourselves what is going wrong that we are at this point. The laureates and scientists involved with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have laid out a number of measures to deal with this threat that they see being so close to us today. In the limited time left to me I will not go into them.

I will, however, make one final point. We have a great opportunity with the Security Council for the next two years. We should use it to make a real success of the review conference scheduled for August of next year. We should put the ratification and the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, CTBT, at the centre of our efforts. We should try to get the major powers back to the table on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the renewal of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, START. We are not paying enough attention to the weaponisation of space. Education here at home to get another level, another generation of politicians, civil society and diplomats, closely involved in these efforts is crucial. I would love to see the Department leading on something like that in order that when we think of the UN, we think not only of the blue helmets but also of the diplomats doing such important work.

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