Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In recent days, I have written to all Members of the House considering the issue of neutrality and the discussion on neutrality that has raged in this House for as long as I have been a Member. I have never accepted that Ireland is a neutral country and, although there is never a good time to have this discussion, we must have it now.

For the moment, we decided to provide assistance to one of the belligerents involved in the current engagement. By the way, I am 100% supportive of what has been done for Ukraine and I am sorry we did not do more. We have armaments we could send to Ukraine and I really wish we would send them to Ukraine. People need to be able to defend themselves, and anybody who has been watching television images will have seen the horrific bombardment of cities that has been taking place. I fully support the position taken by the Government and I wish it would go much further.

The time has come to settle the discussion on neutrality once and for all. Our Defence Forces is closely aligned with NATO and whether or not we become a member of NATO is another topic entirely, but to be militarily non-aligned is not to be neutral. It is to mean that we can choose a position at any given time we want. We were at the Russian Embassy this morning and we met the Ukrainian ambassador. The images we are seeing are horrific. Tomorrow morning, thanks to my colleague, Senator Keogan, we will have ambassadors from all over the world in Leinster House to support Ukraine. I call on all Members of the House to support Senator Keogan who has put this together, about which I am sure she will have plenty to say.

A few days ago, when I spoke about this, people said "he is off his head". At the end of the day, we have to realise that we could be facing up to 150,000 refugees coming to this country. As of today, we are obliged to take up to 40,000. There are now more than 2 million refugees in Poland. The figure of 150,000 is if only 7 million people cross the border, which is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

We need to have the discussion on our position in foreign affairs soon. I would appreciate if the Acting Leader would request that we have a debate on the issue of neutrality. Let us kick it out into the open. I have been asking for this for eight years. Now is the time to have that discussion and let us see where it leads us.