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

The Government has resorted to McCarthyism. That is what we saw here today. It is absolutely unbelievable but it is not surprising it would have adopted the tactics of the Cold War merchants of the United States who sought to actively crank up inter-imperialist rivalry to the terrifying level that at one point we were on the brink of a nuclear war over Cuba. Those are the stakes. The Government should be honest on where it stands in that very frightening new international security framework, to use the Minister of State's phrase. Let me be clear about our position because it is crystal clear and consistent. We support neither Washington nor Moscow, neither London nor Beijing. We oppose all these empires and imperial military blocks equally. We have a record of it which, frankly, is very much better than that of the Government.

Fianna Fáil leaders have gone over and hobnobbed with Putin. We have never done that. In fact, we have comrades who are languishing in Russian prisons at the moment because they opposed Putin's bloody war in Ukraine. We just do not happen to believe escalating that conflict to the point of a possible nuclear war is a very good idea. We think it is terrifyingly dangerous. However, we are absolutely consistent, unlike the Government. There is one thing missing in the Government's amendment and in its characterisation of the new international situation that allows it to abandon solemn commitments, made in its parties' manifestos, in the Dáil and in the programme for Government, that it would retain the triple lock. Its justification for that is the new international framework but the only thing it mentions in its amendment is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is not a word about the various obvious other new contexts for this, specifically that the powers that dominate NATO are the ones that are arming to the teeth the state that is committing genocide in Gaza and that, even now, Biden refuses to say the action Israel took in killing 45 people in Rafah in a bombing of people languishing in tents who had fled from other parts of Gaza does not breach his red line. I think Putin is a monster and a tyrant. By the way, I said this in the Dáil long before the Government ever used words like that about Putin. However, what sort of monster and tyrant does not think the regime that slaughtered innocent people in tents who fled to Rafah from other places is not equally a monster and a tyrant? The amendment makes no mention of that or the regime that was capable of killing, directly and indirectly, 1 million people in Iraq based on a pack of lies concocted about weapons of mass destruction. The Government was silent about that and allowed 2 million troops to go through Shannon Airport to perpetrate that slaughter. Those were criminal actions based on a pack of lies.

We are consistent - we oppose war and empires. That is what Irish people feel about neutrality because we were victims of empires and, therefore, we should not align with them. We should stand with the oppressed of the world against these warmongering powers and empires.

As well as the Government's breaches of promises in its manifestos and statements in the Dáil, I draw the Minister of State's attention to a possible legal impediment to the Government doing what it wants to do in getting rid of the triple lock and abandoning further our neutrality, which is the national declarations made at the time of the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon. Those national declarations were launched with the EU in advance of those repeat referendums in order to assure the Irish public that under no circumstances would the triple lock be abandoned. They were not just verbal commitments; they were launched with the EU. Arguably, if the Government attempts to bring this legislation through, it will be in breach of international law. Think about that one, as well as the moral bankruptcy of saying one thing to people before an election and abandoning it afterwards. As Deputy Paul Murphy laid out forensically, there is nothing in current legislation or in the triple lock that prevents us from doing humanitarian or other missions that are genuinely about peacekeeping. We insist that there is a constraint on the Government, which should be in our Constitution, that prevents it from deploying the sons and daughters of working-class people in wars headed up by powers like the United States, Britain, France or Germany - the states that are complicit and up to their necks in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The horror we are witnessing could be turned off like that if the United States, Britain and Germany stopped arming Israel.

The Government suggests that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a reason we should ally ourselves with powers like that. No, the opposite is the case. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is the reason we should never have anything to do with these bloody imperial powers. We stood with the Afghani people when Russia invaded Afghanistan. That was a bloody, horrific war. We stood and protested with the people of Chechnya when Russia launched a bloody, murderous assault on its people. We stood with the people in Hong Kong when they fought against a crushing by the Chinese regime of their democracy. We stand with the people of Tibet against the Chinese regime. By the same token, we stand with all oppressed people - the Palestinians, the people of Yemen as they are being slaughtered by the Saudi regime armed by the United States, and people in Latin America who, time and again, were victims of the United States believing that South America was its backyard and was willing to arm militias to undermine democratic governments and movements in El Salvador, Nicaragua and so on. That is a consistent foreign policy. It is what I think people want. It would be an absolute betrayal of Irish neutrality and our entire history of resistance and opposition to empire and colonialism for the Government to do what it is trying to do, as well as it very possibly being a breach of solemn legal commitments made in advance of the second Nice and Lisbon treaty referendums. The Government has been called out. It is interesting that the Tánaiste said we provoke him. We provoke you because we remind you of the facts and cut through the dishonest narrative the Government has used to justify its moves away from neutrality.

See this speech in context