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

We will also be moving an amendment. We will support Deputy Pringle's amendment. To make it clear, our amendment is additional to the Government amendment so it does not require the deletion of anything that is in the Government amendment but adds to it. Specifically, there is a condemnation of NATO's role in escalating the war, of increasing militarisation in Europe, a call for a reassertion of Irish neutrality, and a commitment that we will not be joining NATO.

We in People Before Profit absolutely share, as we have done from the beginning, the outright, unequivocal and unconditional condemnation of Vladimir Putin's brutal and unjustifiable war. He has rained down death, destruction and misery on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across Ukraine and he has wrought death and destruction on the soldiers he has conscripted from Russia into that war, many of whom do not want to be fighting or losing their lives in his brutal, futile and unjustifiable war. His speech earlier this week is just frankly vile in its epitome of what an autocrat and dictator looks like. There should be no doubt about his role in instigating this horrific war.

As Deputy Pringle said, understanding that fact, having to condemn that and calling on Putin to withdraw does not does not mean the way to solve this terrible situation is for NATO, a military alliance with its own bloody and brutal history, to seek to escalate that war, possibly to a terrifying conclusion. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was set up by people at the end of the Second World War after the use by the United States, the only country which has ever used nuclear weapons, to blow Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pieces over two days, killing tens of thousands of people. The organisation set up a thing called the Doomsday Clock. It recently published its view that we were closer now to nuclear Armageddon and doomsday than we have ever been since the dropping of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs. That is a terrifying thought. They are suggesting it is closer now than even during the Cuban Missile Crisis because of the big powers in the world believing they have the right to possess nuclear weapons and to escalate conflicts to the possible use of those weapons. Against that insane possibility of this absolutely horrific situation getting even worse, for Ireland not to use its position as a neutral country to urge de-escalation and non-military solutions to the bloody invasion is a terrible abdication of our role as a neutral country.

I cannot understand the inconsistency in this regard, because if we take at face value the commitment of the proposers of the motion, or indeed of most of the western powers, that their interest in the Ukrainian war is purely to uphold the right to the territorial integrity of Ukraine and its right to self-determination and to resist an unjust war, why then do the same principles not apply to the Palestinian people, who are resisting an illegal occupation of their land? Why is that the case? Why are there no offers of military support from NATO to the Palestinians? Why is that case? Could it have anything to do somehow with the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory being done by an ally of the Western powers that is armed to the teeth by the United States, Britain and France? Has it anything to do with that? Some of the proposers of the motion were in government when the United States led the brutal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why there were no motions asserting the right of the Iraqi people to resist the US invasion that led to 1 million deaths in that country? Had it anything to do with the fact the invaders were seen as allies by this country and western powers? That tells us there is a different agenda at work. Yes, we should show solidarity with the Ukrainian people but our voice as a neutral country should be to oppose military escalation and warmongering by all big powers.

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