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

This morning I received an email from a former member of the Defence Forces who described how at every single military checkpoint he or any Irish soldier was ever at, their safety and our credibility was protected by our neutrality. He went on to say that, lately, we have been picking our fights, and the more we do so, the more we lose our integrity. He asked me to urge this House to keep the faith with military neutrality for that reason. That is the problem.

If we oppose the madness we are seeing unfolding in Ukraine, we have to be consistent in opposing all militarism and all imperialism and not be selective. Absolutely, we must condemn Putin's brutal invasion, but are we going to condemn less what the Saudi dictatorship is doing in Yemen now, supported by the US and the UK, who are members of NATO, and are armed to the teeth by the West, or what Amnesty International describes as crimes against humanity on an ongoing basis against the Palestinian people, or say nothing about it? Does neutrality not mean standing against all warmongering and all dictators, and do we not have to hold fast to that tradition that indeed helped found this State, with the ideas of people like James Connolly and the rebels of 1916 rebelling against the madness of the First World War?

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