Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ireland has a long history of neutrality, of being non-aligned and of independent foreign policy. Like many who have spoken before me and to whose voice I will add mine, the reason I will do this is because it is our history. We are not a colonial power like many others. We were the colonised. We had a history of trying to find a roadmap towards self-determination. We have had great difficulties in this regard and we all know that many would have seen the Northern conflict as intractable but it was where one of the most successful peace processes in the world was put in place. While every situation is not absolutely comparable, there are definitely lessons that can be won. The Irish people remain committed to that idea of neutrality and non-alignment. We need to ensure that we protect that because I, like many others, would be very worried by what has been said by commentators from the other side of the House and, in particular, that from Government Ministers. The fact is that the people completely believe in the importance of our neutrality.

Many have spoken about listening earlier to "Morning Ireland" and the talk with regard to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL. I was very taken by the fact that this was an operation which allows for tripartite communications which involve all of the stakeholders, and one can imagine what that involves in south Lebanon. It involves de-escalating if we have situations where that is required. The other thing is that it is the eyes of the world that are being provided in a great many cases by Irish soldiers on the situations so they cannot fester or escalate. Beyond that, their duty is to defend civilians. This is what we must protect.

Many have also spoken about what we have unfortunately seen from many, who would like to see us more aligned with themselves. We have seen greenlighting from them for Israeli barbarism.

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We have all called out the barbarism of Hamas and the Irish Government has been positive against some of the pushback at European level but we need condemnation and we need a ceasefire. We need the sort of strength of language that was shown against Russian imperialism. We cannot have what we have had from Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, and Rishi Sunak; unfortunately the list is almost endless. We sometimes have to be the brave people who take the stand and we can only do that from a position of neutrality and non-alignment.

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