Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2023-03-23
============================================================

Gino Kenny (PBP), Dublin Mid-West

I disagree on the basis that there have been soundings, even from the Minister, and from other Ministers, on Ireland's neutrality. Let us look at the evidence. Why would Ireland participate in an EU battle group in the first place? Permanent structured co-operation, PESCO, also comes into play, as does the use of Shannon Airport as a military base. Millions of American troops have gone through Shannon Airport and they participated in a number of wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East. The evidence points towards an erosion by stealth of our neutrality which is being undermined by this Government. This is not me being paranoid; the evidence is there. Surely our participation in battle groups and PESCO has to undermine our neutrality.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-03-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:43+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-03-23