I will be sharing time with Deputy O’Donoghue and we will have five minutes each. I will pick up on one of the final points the Minister of State made. He said that 76 years on, Robert Schuman would probably recognise the instability that exists now. I agree with him in that regard. If we look to the east, we can say that what is happening now represents the realisation of the worst fears from back then. Russia has literally rolled tanks into Ukraine, is carrying out proxy attacks, proxy wars and cyberattacks, and is ultimately operating to destabilise Europe. That has been the fear for many decades and it is being realised. We see the unexpected aspect of this rupture when we look to the west. Throughout the European Union's evolution, the United States was a dependable ally of the Union. That came with concerns - there were issues in relation to the build-up of US military personnel and facilities in mainland Europe - but the US was a dependable economic ally. That is no longer the case. In the last week, the US has announced that it is moving 5,000 troops from Germany. That is something that President Biden had put in train but the notable aspect of the method used by the Trump Administration to carried that out was that there were no negotiations and no forewarning that it was going to happen. Again, we have seen yet another snap decision. It might not be a big deal in and of itself – perhaps it was welcomed by some – but when we look at the first 15 months of Trump 2.0 with a wider view and when we examine the wider trend of tariffs, Greenland and a US approach to NATO which impacts a lot of our European Union allies, we realise that Europe now needs to look away from the US, away from the self-appointed leader of the free world and away from isolationism. This is bringing up some difficult questions for Europe and for Ireland, chiefly in the area of security. We hold our military neutrality very dear. I have been at conferences in Europe over the last 18 months. It is clear that many people in Europe want to move towards a common defence union. That is something we must resist and we can resist. We must do so while improving our own security, however, because the charge against Ireland is that we have not taken our own security seriously. It has been a decades-long embarrassment that we have been reliant on Britain, the US and others for our own security. The security threats have changed - the new threats are potential cyberattacks and attacks to undersea cables – so we need a sophisticated approach. It is not the build-up of tanks, jets or troops; it is the build-up of capacity and of sophistication. We need to work with our allies and, in doing so, to be forthright that we not want to join NATO or a common defence union and nor will we ever. It may be a delicate path but it is a path that we must take with clarity. We must not be afraid and we must not hide behind vague definitions of this, that and the other. I note recently, the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, was the first non-European leader to attend a meeting of the European Political Community. That is more than merely symbolic. It is an important indication because it is another signal following Prime Minister Carney's speech in February that we cannot follow, and the European Union cannot follow, the United States into isolationism. There is a troubled and uncertain road ahead, but Europe needs to pull together and answer and meet hard challenges and hard questions with honesty and forthrightness. Europe has consistently let itself down in the last number of years in its approach to Israel. It is inconsistent, inhumane, unethical and downright wrong that Europe is not calling out Israel for the genocide that is being carried out on the people of Palestine, for what it is doing in Lebanon and for its continued expansion of the illegal settlements in the West Bank. Europe will not retain any moral leadership, will fail to bring along allies and will fail to bring along the people of Ireland if it continues to treat Israel in this exceptional manner by excusing these despicable acts that continue. Ireland and the Irish people remain, by and large, positively disposed towards the EU. I think Brexit had a lot to do with that. Without doubt, a lot of EU states stood by us during that process but we cannot take that support for granted. We must be honest and forthright. We must be committed to Europe but we must also be able to pursue our own sovereign interests.

Sentiment score: 0.03