Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I just have two and a half minutes. I will use my voice to say I am horrified at the sabre rattling, and not by Russia alone but by NATO, America and England. It is completely unacceptable. I will quote from Afri who have written to us all and pointed out, on the death of Desmond Tutu, where he "identified war and the war industry as one of the great evils of our time [and] pointing to the immoral wastage of resources which it represents as well as the extent to which it destroys people and wreaks havoc on our precious planet". I agree totally with Afri, which also stated: “On the occasion of the burial of such a great peacemaker, we ask: why is Ireland increasingly joining the war mongers club?” That is exactly what we are doing. At that point in January the question was: why are we increasing spending on weapons of death and why are we encouraging Irish businesses to get involved in producing weapons? If I had longer I would go into that with the Minister of State.

For today I am using my voice to say that I do not agree with what Russia is doing. I certainly do not agree with what NATO is doing. What we have here is absolute warmongering, with games of war without any reality, or the voice of Ireland being neutral, and the use of that voice in a positive way.

The website of the Department of Foreign Affairs states in respect of Russian-Irish relations that: "Ireland’s election to the UN Security Council for the period 2021-2022 has enhanced high-level links between Ireland and Russia." On those enhanced high-level links, what have we done with that role and how have we used that role? Perhaps the Minister of State might enlighten us today rather than joining the voices of the warmongers. Consensus has got into trouble before with information that led us – not me - to the invasion of Iraq, which was completely based on false information. I am using my voice today to say that Ireland is a neutral country. There should be no troops through Shannon Airport. Let us make clear that we will not allow Shannon to be used.

In my last few seconds I want to raise the issue of Palestine again. Was that raised at the Council and what action are we now taking? We have expressed concern as to the organisations that were designated as terrorist organisations. Let us go beyond our concern and make a statement now as an independent sovereign country ourselves. What have we done to help those six organisations that have been unacceptably and deplorably designated as terrorist organisations? I understand that we fund two of them.

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