Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have two questions. I have charged that the Government is betraying our tradition of neutrality. It did that with regard to Shannon and regarding numerous US military adventures. It is doing it again. It rightly criticises Russia for what it is doing off our coast with military exercises that are unwanted and should stop - Russia should be told we do not want them - and for Russia's often aggressive stance, military escalations and massing troops on the border, but has the Government any word of criticism about NATO? If we are trying to be balanced and objective, has the Government a single word of criticism for the eastward expansion of NATO and for the US putting troops, military advisers and so forth into Ukraine? Does it approve of that? Does the Irish Government think it is a good idea that NATO is doing military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea while these tensions are ratcheting up? Does it think these are good ideas, given how they will contribute to the escalation? The Minister of State should give us a straight answer on that. I suspect he has not got a word of criticism of NATO, but I ask him to prove me wrong.

On foot of what he said earlier, and I realise we do not have time for a broad debate on it, I would not be so proud of defending the two-state solution. Many Palestinians do not support the two-state solution. Frankly, the two-state solution is the equivalent in Palestine of arguing for maintaining partition in Ireland. That is what the two-state solution was, the partition of Palestine along ethnic and religious lines. Some would argue, Israelis and Palestinians, that this is the main source of the conflict and that what is actually needed is equality and respect for human rights regardless of whether one is a Jew, an Arab, a Christian or a Muslim, and that a state where everybody has that equality would be a far better solution. I would say most Palestinians now subscribe to that view.

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