The Government is waging a very thinly veiled stealth war against Irish neutrality. The move to remove the triple lock is part of that very conscious and deliberate campaign by this Government to undermine our traditional neutrality. Can the Tánaiste please explain why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock? Is it not clearly just a move to undermine Ireland's traditional neutrality and involve us in the wars of big powers?
Sentiment score: -0.36
I do not trust Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with Irish neutrality. For example, the Department of Defence has just contracted a US defence agency based in the pentagon to redesign the Irish Defence Forces. In the blurb on its website, this US pentagon-based company says it is grounded in American values. Maybe they are the values of Donald Trump as he has shown in a video the Tánaiste may have seen about Gaza, with statues of Trump and dollar signs being made by Trump in Gaza. Should we trust Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, given that millions of US troops were allowed go through Shannon Airport, in a neutral country, to prosecute wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? The Government has involved us in PESCO and the EU militarisation project, which is in turn aligned with NATO, dominated by the United States, Germany and Britain. Why would we trust you with neutrality?
Sentiment score: 0.22
The point of the UN part of the triple lock is that we do not deploy troops in conflicts between the big imperial powers. The Minister is right: Putin is a nasty imperialist aggressor. However, is it not interesting that he does not call Trump a nasty imperialist aggressor when he has just said to the Ukrainians, "We might consider giving you a few weapons, but only if you give us all those raw materials in your country", or while he is trying to do a real estate deal on top of the broken bones and bodies of the victims of genocide in Gaza. The Minister does not mention him as an imperialist or the new German Chancellor who has invited Netanyahu, a wanted war criminal, to Germany which is also involved in NATO. He does not mention them and that is the truth of it. The Minister wants to get rid of the triple lock so we can deploy Irish troops to get involved in conflicts headed up by military alliances dominated by the United States, Britain and Germany - people who are every bit potentially, and often in reality, as nasty as the Russians.
Sentiment score: -0.47
The Minister has not given one example.
Sentiment score: 0.00
I am listening very carefully.
Sentiment score: 0.20
They are not good examples.
Sentiment score: -0.34
Every single opinion polls show the majority of people are in favour of neutrality.
Sentiment score: 0.44
Whatever. They also, in their hundreds of thousands, protested about decisions of previous Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments to allow millions of US troops to go through Shannon Airport to assist US-UK led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered on the basis of lies put out by the US. The coalition Government of which the Tánaiste was a member allowed that to happen. Why would we trust the Government when it had NATO generals overseeing our troops in Cork at least twice in the past couple of years? Why would we trust it when the Department of Defence has employed a US Pentagon-based contractor imbued with US values to redesign our Defence Forces? Why would we trust it when it is involving us with the PESCO alliance, which is aligned with NATO and dominated by the US, the UK, France and Germany, some of the biggest imperial powers with brutal records of warmongering? Why would we trust it?
Sentiment score: 0.07
We got the triple lock.
Sentiment score: 0.00
The US context has changed too.
Sentiment score: 0.00