Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

What is abhorrent is not our exposure of the reality that the Government has a hand-picked consultative forum, with a hand-picked chair, who is on record as being a supporter of US militarism. Us being critical of that is not abhorrent. What is abhorrent and contrary to democratic debate and free speech is that the Government is not doing any of this in the full glare of the public and allowing the public to decide. The Government was originally going to have a citizens' assembly. That was ditched. Why? It was because the Government was afraid of the views of citizens. We had a Bill in this Parliament which the Government voted down to say that the people should have the right to decide that we should put neutrality into the Constitution. We want to have a real debate about these things.

What we are exposing, however, and what the Government does like being exposed at all, is that these consultative forums are an absolute farce. They are part of a managed process designed to say that the great and good have come together and have decided that Ireland is now too mature to stick with these old notions of neutrality and we are going to ditch it.

That is why the Minister has the thing completely stacked. I have no problem with people like Brigid Laffan, John O'Brennan or whoever with explicit anti-neutrality or pro NATO views speaking. I have a problem with there being one speaker in favour of neutrality over the course of four days. The thing is clearly rigged and the Minister has a problem with that being pointed out.

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