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

Over the weekend, President Higgins rang the alarm bells about the dangerous drift in Ireland's foreign policy away from neutrality and raised concerns about the composition of the Government's consultative forum. The President has to be somewhat constrained and diplomatic in what he says.

However, what he said echoes what we have been trying to say for the past number of months, namely, that the Government has seized on the tragic, brutal, unjustifiable war of Putin in Ukraine to try to move Ireland away from neutrality and towards greater involvement with the project of EU militarisation and NATO. This consultative forum is part of that campaign by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and, tragically, the Green Party to soften up public opinion against neutrality and towards closer alignment with EU militarisation and NATO.

We held our breath a little, despite our scepticism about what the forum would look like, but then we saw the list of moderators and speakers for the forum that will take place in what is supposed to be a balanced discussion. It is dripping and packed to the rafters with NATO employees, people who have worked with NATO, people associated with the military-industrial complex, generals, brigadiers, lieutenant commanders of the military, and academics who have published records - these are not personal points - of being pro-NATO, pro-EU militarisation and pro-NATO, US, UK and western foreign policy agendas. In contrast, there is one speaker who has a record of pro-neutrality, anti-war activism. For example, there are three speakers for the module on Ireland's engagement with NATO. One of them is the director of security policy for NATO, one is a member of our military personnel who has been seconded to NATO, and the third is an academic who has a published record of arguing in favour of EU militarisation and closer alignment of Ireland to NATO. That is typical of what this forum is about.

Will the Taoiseach acknowledge that this forum is stacked with pro-NATO, pro-militarisation and anti-neutrality propaganda, and that what we actually need is a balanced debate and a referendum on Ireland's neutrality, in respect of which there has been five Bills in this House over recent years, every one of which Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael voted against?

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