Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. I agree that Russia stands condemned in the international court of opinion for its appalling atrocities against the civilian population of Ukraine and for its unjustifiable and unprovoked war on Ukraine, its territorial integrity and its sovereignty. Everybody else tried everything to stop Russia going to war. Leading NATO countries the Deputy decries on an ongoing basis and accuses of being militarist in their orientation did everything they could to say to President Putin he did not need to go to war, that any security concerns he had could be transparently dealt with in terms of either missile deployment or troops deployment on the Continent of Europe, and that if he had issues with deployments in eastern Europe, he should talk and we should have a forum for discussion. That needs to be acknowledged and the Deputy needs to acknowledge it too, because I can recall two or three weeks ago he was describing NATO as the warmongerer in the situation when it has been far from it. There has been only one warmongerer here and that has been Russia.

In terms of what the Deputy might describe as the clamour of media commentators around the issue of neutrality, that is called democracy. We might not like views, but that is democracy. We cannot decry the clamour of commentators. We should actually embrace the clamour of commentary because that represents diversity of opinion and viewpoints and the rights of people to reflect. This crisis does cause a need for further reflection on the overall security architecture within Europe and within the wider world.

Ireland has a tradition of military non-alignment or military neutrality. We have never been politically neutral. Indeed, even in 1939, when the German representative came to the Irish Government, it was made very clear to that representative of the closeness and how Britain would always have to get consideration. De Valera himself said that. He said it rendered it inevitable for the Irish Government to show a certain consideration for Britain. Likewise, as we have evolved through our membership of the European Union, we developed in 1999 the Partnership for Peace with NATO to sustain interoperability if we were on peace missions or peace enforcement missions with NATO countries. We have been part of permanent structured co-operation, PESCO. We have been part of battle groups, none of which were ever deployed but which ensured the Irish Defence Forces were at a certain modern competence and capacity to enable them to do what we do best, which is peacekeeping. Ireland does peacekeeping well. We have the longest unbroken record in terms of peacekeeping since about 1957, when we first started our peacekeeping role in the world.

We do need a discussion on this, however, although not right now. In the middle of a terrible war we should be concentrating our resources on helping the people of Ukraine in a practical way. I think we could look at a citizens' assembly to discuss these issues in the fullness of time, where detailed prepared submissions and perspectives from a wide range of opinion could be articulated.

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