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

I thank the Deputy for his question. He might also have picked up on the latter part of my commentary where I indicated that our immediate focus should be on the current war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis flowing from it, as well as the need to direct all our policies and energies to that. I am somewhat concerned as we need a united approach in the country on how we deal with Ukraine. People have different perspectives on military neutrality and how security policy evolves, and I am simply saying that one mechanism to facilitate such a discussion would be a citizens' assembly. I do not have a timeline just yet or anything like that. I put that as a contribution to that debate to try to separate that from the immediate need to focus on the crisis in Ukraine and its impact on the European Continent. There is nothing related to our military neutrality that so far has restricted what we or Europe is doing in anything it is doing.

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