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

We were recently elected to the United Nations Security Council, which is about as good a benchmark for our credibility in the international world as anything I can think of. That is because we have pursued an independent foreign policy as members of the European Union, the greatest characteristic of which has probably been our nuclear non-proliferation initiatives. This began with the then Minister for External Affairs, Frank Aiken, as part of the Irish resolutions at the UN in the 1950s. He was a true architect of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Those are the kinds of issues that need to be worked through in respect of anybody’s reflections on how we might evolve our independent foreign policy within the European Union context and our solidarity with European Union nations.

To be fair to all the commentary so far, people are pointing up that the world is changing. President Putin has fundamentally changed the multilateral rules-based order by the nature of his unprovoked attack on Ukraine. It would be foolish to ignore that reality. The European Union is exposed security-wise-----

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