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

Tairgim: "Go léifear an Bille don Dara hUair anois."

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

People Before Profit-Solidarity has put forward this Bill which seeks a referendum on the insertion of neutrality into the Constitution. Many people believe Ireland's neutrality is protected in the Constitution because there is a long understanding and overwhelming support for the idea that Ireland should be neutral but, in fact, that neutrality is not protected in the Constitution, and we believe it is seriously under attack.

Successive Governments have sought to undermine that neutrality most egregiously with the decisions of previous Governments to allow millions of US troops to go through Shannon Airport in order to prosecute bloody and unjustifiable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a war based on a pack of lies about weapons of mass destruction that led to the death of 1 million people, directly and indirectly, and essentially destroyed Iraqi society, damage from which it will probably not recover for decades if ever. Ireland facilitated that even though it is supposed to be a neutral country. We facilitated the outrageous practice of rendition, better termed as kidnapping and torture by the US, whereby they send Gulfstream jets around the world, kidnap people they consider to be a threat to American security, without due process, and take them to black sites around the world and torture them, often in despotic, brutal regimes that allow the US to carry on this practice.

Most recently, the Government sought to exploit the terrible crisis in Ukraine, what is undoubtedly a bloody imperialist and murderous war that has been initiated by Vladimir Putin. The Government and the wider European political establishment are seeking to exploit that terrible crisis in order to justify moving towards greater EU militarisation, the establishment of a European army, and closer alignment with NATO. The Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, said recently that neutrality is a policy issue that can change at any time. The Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, said, "I think we’ll need to think about deeper involvement in European Defence." The Minister, Deputy Coveney, has suggested that we need to spend more resources on defence as well as co-operate with other EU countries and partnerships with NATO in some areas. That is what he was reported as having said at a meeting he attended in the United States. He can respond to that suggestion during the debate. He has also said that we may get involved in the expanded rapid reaction force of 5,000 troops, which is essentially the embryo of a European army.

Ireland's neutrality and the struggle for an independent Irish republic are one and the same, they always have been. To move away from Ireland's neutrality is not just some sort of interesting tactical or strategic choice. It is, in fact, a betrayal of the essential struggle to establish an independent republic, going back to Wolfe Tone, who first advocated for both Irish independence and neutrality, and to James Connolly and those who led people out in 1916 and the entire Irish revolution. As soon as the First World War broke out, James Connolly established the Irish Neutrality League to argue that Ireland should in no way be a participant or supporter of either warring side in the First World War. At the time he wrote something that echoes strongly today. He wrote:

Should the working class of Europe rather than slaughter each other for the benefit of kings and financiers, proceed ... to erect barricades all over Europe, to break up bridges and destroy the transport service that war might be abolished, we should be perfectly justified in following such a glorious example and contributing our aid to the final dethronement of the vulture classes that rule and rob the world.

Brilliant and so correct. They had vulture funds robbing the world then, just as we have now. Connolly was clear. As soon as that war broke out, when people in Irish politics, in the Home Rule Party, argued that Irish people could be, and they were, slaughtered in that war Connolly said "No". He said that Ireland opposed both sides in that war. In fact, it was the outbreak of the First World War, which led to the slaughter of 14 million people, that prompted Connolly to say that we had to have a rebellion in Ireland, not just for independence but to strike a blow against empires and the slaughter of the First World War. The Irish revolution was significantly accelerated by the conscription crisis of 1918. Upon the end of the war, the Irish revolution was part of a series of revolutions across Europe, in Russia, Germany, France and so on, against the war, a slaughter that was ended by the revolt of working people against all the warmongers of Europe. People Before Profit-Solidarity believe we have to uphold that tradition which is now under serious threat.

Neutrality does not mean indifference. Neutrality means standing against warmongers and empires and standing with the oppressed. If we throw that away, we will throw away what is the identity that was the struggle for the Irish Republic, and we will do so at our peril. We should not do that and I hope the House will support the Bill.

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