As the Taoiseach knows, Ireland will take over the EU Presidency for six months as of tomorrow and the Taoiseach will host a launch event in Dublin Castle to commence the six months of the Irish EU Presidency. I will be joining a demonstration outside Dublin Castle with anti-war and peace groups, pro-neutrality groups and Palestine solidarity groups, because they and I are concerned that, rather than using the position of the EU Presidency to defend our tradition of neutrality and reflect the views of the majority of Irish people, who want to protect that tradition of neutrality, the Government will cave in to the agenda of Ursula von der Leyen and the European Union to ramp up in an enormous way the militarisation of Europe and the arms industry in Europe, and that it will do this at a time when the European Union is deeply complicit in the horrific genocide Israel is committing against the Palestinian people. The background to that is a policy document of the EU titled, tellingly, ReArm Europe Plan, which was published in the middle of last year - ReArm Europe. I am sure the Taoiseach is familiar with it, and if he were not that, would be a serious abdication of his responsibilities. It is a document which proposes to dramatically increase arms expenditure in Europe - about double it - from approximately €400 billion per year to €800 billion per year. This is money that could be spent on addressing the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, health and education, but Europe is proposing to double arms expenditure. This is at the same time that Europe is exporting about €800 billion worth of arms and military components to Israel while it commits a genocide against the Palestinian people. My fear is that the Government will use this as a propaganda jamboree to justify what we know it has committed to, which is getting rid of the Irish triple lock, removing obstacles to the deployment of Irish troops where there is no UN mandate, while Europe is pushing for greater militarisation-----
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-----greater spending on weapons and arming a genocide in Gaza.
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Will the Government stand up for neutrality?
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Will it oppose the EU militarisation agenda and complicity with genocide or will it cave in to that agenda?
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I spent much of last night conversing with a young man from Ukraine who fled here because he did not want to be conscripted into the disastrous Ukrainian-Russian war and is fearful he is going to be sent back there because Zelenskyy is asking that people of his age now be sent back to fight on a front line where tens of thousands are being slaughtered. That disastrous war was, of course, started by Putin but young men like him do not want to fight in it. The Taoiseach did not refer to the document I mentioned. It states "The moment has come for Europe to re-arm. ... [we need] a massive increase in European defence spending ..." That is what is being urged by Ursula von der Leyen and the EU at the moment, namely, to double arms expenditure from about €400 billion to €800 billion at the same time as Europe is exporting about €800 billion in arms to Israel to commit genocide. We are a neutral country. That is about opposing militarism, war and so on. Is the Taoiseach going to speak up against that? Is he going-----
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-----to oppose the militarisation agenda-----
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-----oppose the shameful complicity with the genocide-----
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-----and do an about-turn on the question of the triple lock-----
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-----which is about dismantling our neutrality?
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