Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy Leader will be aware of the fact that I wrote to all Members of the House yesterday regarding the need for a debate on Ireland's status in terms of whether we are neutral, militarily non-aligned or militarily aligned. It is time that the debate took place and I appreciate that the middle of a worldwide crisis in Ukraine is not the best time to have it. I was rather disappointed to see one of our colleagues, in the other House, bring forward legislation, which they hope to bring into the Dáil in the next few days on the neutrality issue. I do not think that it is the way forward but I think that there is a need for a discussion and we need to consider carefully where we go with this. For too long the issue has been bandied about as neutral, non-neutral and all sorts of other things. We are moving into a situation here by default where statements are being made by Ministers and the Taoiseach, which has moved Ireland's policy position from where it was to a new position of being non-aligned and, in fact, the words "non-neutral" have been used. It is no secret that I want to send weapons to Ukraine so my position may not necessarily fall into the neutral camp but certainly the debate must take place. The people are entitled to hear that debate take place. I am mindful of a period when I was president of the Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, and I made a statement; one of my executive members asked me who the hell gave me permission to say what I said. This House is the House that makes decisions about how we progress the neutrality issue.

I want to mention a second issue. The Government has been very generous and brought forward a payment for those who were front-line workers during the pandemic but we missed out people such as those who worked in organisations like Ability West in County Galway where staff came in every day to deal with people with disabilities of one type or another. They had to deal with all of the same front-line issues encountered by nurses in hospitals and other front-line workers. We might have a debate on that at some stage in the future and consider what organisations are entitled to be considered for a front-line payment because staff put themselves at risk every single day when they went in to work and dealt with people coming in for respite.