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

We have highlighted over recent days and weeks our fear that the Government's consultative forum is stacked with pro-NATO voices, NATO employees, generals, brigadiers, people involved with the military-industrial complex and those generally in favour of militarisation. The Taoiseach said – yesterday, I believe – that he would consider the possibility of rebalancing the forum. Has he done so? At the moment, it is just a sham and reflects an incredibly pro-NATO, pro-militarisation basis.

The political community meeting reflects the same sort of bias although it concerns itself, rightly, with the criminal behaviour of Vladimir Putin. Interestingly, we had five Russian anti-Putin, anti-war activists in Leinster House yesterday. Every single Deputy and Senator was notified but not a single representative of the Government bothered to turn up. People are actually fighting Putin. Did those at the political community meeting discuss what the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine is here to discuss today, which is what she describes as the shocking double standards in the treatment of Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians and the treatment of Putin for his crimes against Ukraine? We have referred to this many times.

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