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

As I did not get a chance to speak yesterday, I first thank the Government for the official recognition of the State of Palestine. I also acknowledge that it stood up to the veiled threats from Israel in taking this important step. It is a start. There is a lot more to be done but at least I hope it has given some solace to the people of Palestine and Gaza. I also give my solidarity to the Tánaiste for what is happening on social media. Unfortunately, it is what I have come to expect from the immoral supporters of this genocide and Netanyahu's bloodthirst and depravity, all so he can avoid political accountability.

I only have a little time so I will move straight on to the People Before Profit motion. I thank it for giving us the opportunity to debate it in the Dáil. Neutrality is the wish and desire of the majority of the Irish people, a majority the Government will go against at its peril. Irish people are not the GI Janes and GI Joes salivating over NATO. They are not the hand-picked academics, the lobbyists for the industrial arms complex, the safe pair of hands or those who said they felt ashamed of our neutrality at the consultative forum, while they beat themselves up and talk up battles and wars that you, I or they will never fight, never mind win. They are not a safe pair of hands. They are not safe at all and Irish people know this instinctively. They know they will talk them into conflicts that will impoverish them and kill their children, while the industrial arms industry that demands them hide in their bunkers and high-security compounds.

It will not come as a shock to the Government that Sinn Féin is in favour or protecting our neutrality as the strength it is and not the weakness the majority of the hand-picked panel on the consultative forum considered it to be. Tinkering with the triple lock flies in the face of what people were assured of around the referendums on the Nice and Lisbon treaties. It is a betrayal. Fianna Fáil has no mandate to remove it. It wishes to turn our forces from peacekeepers into active participants in conflict. On top of that, it wishes to strip them of the protection of the UN while they fight other people's battles. There are very few Irish mothers who would have their sons and daughters fighting for the benefit of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and her bureaucratic ilk. These are people who are making Europe complicit in Israel's war crimes by arming and funding it. This is all decided by an elite who will not be harmed or touched. Our neutrality is not for sale. Our people know by watching on their phones and other screens that there is already too much war in this world. They see it up close and personal and they see that it is innocent civilians and children who pay the price.

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