Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the proposed consultative forum on international security policy. We are addressing this in a week when Ireland and the world are marking the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba. This week also marks the anniversary of the ratification of the Sykes-Picot agreement and all that this signalled for the Middle East, with European colonial powers drawing straight lines across lands that were not theirs. This still has an impact on the Middle East right to this day. All the while, Russia’s criminal war on Ukraine rages on the eastern border of our Union of peoples.

I am all in favour of consulting the public on our international security policy. I am all in favour of consulting as widely and as democratically as possible on something that is critical and essential to us as a State, internationally and here at home. I am, therefore, and must be, concerned at the decision to create and constitute a consultative body that is deliberately exclusive. It is exclusive in that it minimises input from the Opposition and the public and is, therefore, primarily a Government confection and reflection. Those contributing are to be appointed by the Government. Their contributions will become part of a report authored by the chair who is also to be appointed by the Government.

I believe that the State’s own security and its role in international security is, and must be, greater and higher than any one political view, any one particular Government or any one coalition of parties, their ambitions and their preferred appointees. Both the Opposition and the public should have critical roles in any security policy and its practice. I find this exclusiveness and minimising retrograde and regrettable, democratically and politically. There is a real risk that the work of this forum, despite being essential for our people, will be done over their heads and that it will be paternalistic in being conducted for their own good instead of with the citizens’ good and own proper involvement.

A citizens’ assembly approach would have been infinitely preferable, and we already know how successful they have been when they have been held. A citizens’ assembly approach would also have made the forum and its work more accessible to the people and more accountable to them. Across the State, everybody knows when a citizens’ assembly is taking place. There is a lot of media coverage before the event and as it meets. There is time for people to get involved, including people who are not always interested in politics but may just listen to the radio. There is time for them to get involved, make submissions and have their say. There is no chance here because the forum, as constituted, is very much of the current Government, by the current Government and for the current Government. For that reason, I worry that the work of the forum will become a topic for the media and for the usual talking heads, and not for the bright, creative, engaged, thinking heads of our people, in whose name it is supposed to exist and function. In all likelihood, any major debates will take place after the event. That is when the vast majority of people will hear about it, and it is a bit late for them to make submissions at that stage.

Nevertheless, in keeping with our own democratic, public and opposition responsibilities, Sinn Féin will engage with the forum, and will do so as closely as we are facilitated and allowed. Within that constructive engagement we will do four key things. First, we will outline our clear and differentiated position on neutrality, so that people know there is another way than that proposed and promoted by the Government. Second, we will advocate that the public should, and must, be consulted through the accepted democratic frameworks of a citizens’ assembly or a referendum to enshrine the principles of neutrality in the Constitution and in the EU treaties. Why did the Government not have a have a citizens' assembly consultation where not just a select few, but as wide as possible a section of society, would set the terms of reference and wording for a referendum on neutrality? Third, as my colleague an Teachta Carthy outlined, we will advocate that any involvement of the Irish State or Defence Forces in international security organisations and frameworks should and must be referred by the Dáil to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence for its considered and detailed scrutiny. Fourth, we will use the forum to highlight the urgent need for the rebuilding of our Defence Forces and, within that, to address the ongoing crisis in getting recruits and keeping them, which means that the working time directive must be implemented without delay. The Tánaiste made promises at the PDFORRA conference some weeks ago around the working time directive. Sinn Féin will keep the Tánaiste to those commitments. If he does not, we certainly will do so if the people decide we should be in government. Neglect by successive governments has depleted our Defence Forces to the degree that they cannot provide the services they are tasked with, trained for, and expected to provide.

I still believe, despite my questions being refused by the Ceann Comhairle, that the Government has questions to answer on the badly kept secret of the arrangements with the RAF in protecting our skies and seas. Ireland, as a neutral State, should be able to patrol and protect its own territories and protect us from new and emerging cyberthreats. It should also be a source of concern to the Tánaiste that when we deploy the MV W.B. Yeatsto the Mediterranean Sea this summer for Operation Irini, we will be left with a pitiful vessel capacity to protect our own waters.

It is precisely because these four issues are of such importance that we believe the forum should be more open and representative than simply a forum of Government appointees. We welcome public discussion on our neutrality, something that the majority want to keep in every poll, no matter how the question is posed, despite the clamour and apparent desire of Government to relinquish it.

Sinn Féin believes our neutrality is of intrinsic quality and value to us as a people, and therefore it should not be traded or swapped for approval from other countries, governments or international organisations. We believe there is an inherent strength and integrity and a difference in Ireland's position on neutrality. We are a small State, but we have a huge heart, a huge reach and a huge reputation across the world. Sinn Féin is ambitious for us internationally - ambitious for us as peace brokers, peacemakers and, more importantly, peacekeepers, and in providing all the humanitarian assistance, comfort and expertise we can offer internationally. We can do this as a strong, honourable, neutral country. There is already too much war in our world. There is too much death right at the edges of our European border. I see Ireland as a voice for diplomacy, possibility and peace. I disagree strongly that war anywhere should be used, not least by our own Government, to get us to relinquish our neutrality. Democratic consultation on our international security policy must, by its nature, be with all the people through proper, wide and representative engagement, not with the select few, however august they are in your own mind. It is something that I regret to say is not to be found in the form of the forum that the Tánaiste seems to have chosen.

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