Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As with many issues like this, the truncated debate giving Members five minutes to speak on something of such fundamental importance does not do justice to it. If one asked the vast majority of our citizens what PESCO is, they would not have a clue. They would probably think it is something to do with fish. However, PESCO is a very important concept. It is permanent security co-operation, a permanent mechanism within the European Union to develop military capabilities and interoperabilities and to make our military equipment and personnel compatible and our training mutual and common. That is what is involved in PESCO. It has been described not as a fixed issue but as a process by many of those involved.

The words used in the briefing note we received, such as "come together voluntarily" and "project-by-project basis", are carefully chosen. The specifics of the projects that are in the motion before the House, and as it is one of three motions I do not have time to go into them in much detail, appear to be prima facievery benign issues, such as cyberthreats and incident response information sharing. Who could object to that? There is also the deployable military disaster relief capability package, special operations forces medical training and maritime semi-autonomous systems for mine countermeasures. All of those, in themselves, appear to be benign and unobjectionable.

I disagree with the Minister. It has been repeatedly stated that this is not a Trojan horse, that it is not a process and that we are not moving towards anything. I vividly remember the debate on the Lisbon treaty, which was originally defeated in this country. We gave assurances in respect of our involvement in any military alliances, including common defence alliances within the European Union. I acknowledge that everything has changed since the illegal and appalling invasion of Ukraine by Putin's forces. That has led to monumental change across Europe, with Sweden and Finland moving away from the neutrality they had guarded dearly for decades. In Germany, Labour's sister party, which is in government, has moved from its previous position to committing to €100 billion in additional defence spending.

What I am saying to the Minister is that it should not be the case that he comes to the House and says that these things are not what they seem to be, that we are just opting into things that suit us and that this is part of training and so forth. What is absolutely required, and this is something the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have said, is a proper debate on where Ireland stands in all of this. The Labour Party would welcome that debate, because we want to set out our vision of neutrality, which is an opt-in neutrality in terms of opting into peacebuilding and peace maintenance and support for the International Court of Justice-----

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