Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

-----to not mention that this is fully functioning. Will the Minister of State please allow me to finish my points, with all the respect that he talked about for debate?

I also want to pick up on the issue that the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, raised about us not supporting European Union membership, which is the most preposterous statement for him to make. We, of course, as the Social Democrats, support European Union membership. Moreover, the European Union supports our neutrality. It is the choice of this Government, and of Fine Gael as a member of EPP Group, to blindly follow the pathway towards militarisation that we are seeing happening in Europe. We also heard the Minister of State, or perhaps that was his colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, speaking about the peace project that is the European Union. It is very clear that those origins of the European Union as a peace project are drifting further and further into our past as we see the militarisation. However, I see that there is conflict. We recognise that there is conflict. We are not blind to what is happening in this world but it is a choice to follow down the path of militarisation or to stay true to our commitment as a country and a State towards peace, human rights and diplomacy. We need to be the annoying voice within the European Union to remind it of its origins and our commitment as a union towards peace and security.

I will finish on the fact that the Minister of State put this forward as this adjustment, this tweak. We have had concerns within the neutrality space within Ireland about this creeping change and the Government has proven again and again that it is willing to dent and damage our neutrality but this is not a creeping change. This is a mammoth step away from neutrality. As a new TD, four months in, the level of cynicism the Government displays is depressing. I refer to the fact that it says on one hand that it supports neutrality and will on the other hand absolutely shred it to pieces by dismantling the triple lock and by increasing the cap from 12 to 50, quadrupling the number of personnel who can be sent overseas by a Minister without any debate. The Minister of State talks to us about debate but the Government has had a whopping total of two Government representatives in the House today, and not even two at the same time.

See this speech in context