Richard Boyd Barrett: Warns Against 'Rearm Europe' Agenda

Taoiseach, as you know, Ireland will be taking over the EU Presidency for six months as of tomorrow and you will be hosting a launch event in Dublin Castle to commence that six months of the Irish EU Presidency. I will be joining a demonstration outside Dublin Castle with anti-war and peace groups and pro-neutrality groups and Palestine solidarity groups because they are concerned, and I am 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, that you're going to 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 you will do this at a time when the European Union is deeply complicit with the horrific genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people. Now the background for me saying that is the policy document of the EU titled tellingly Rearm Europe published in the middle of last year. Rearm Europe. I'm sure you're familiar with a Taoiseach and if you aren't that would be a serious abdication of your responsibilities. A document which is proposing to dramatically increase arms expenditure in Europe, about double it, from about 400 billion euro a year to 800 billion euro a year. Money that could be spent on addressing the cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, health and education, Europe is proposing to double arms expenditure. This by the way is at the same time that Europe is also exporting about 800 billion worth of arms and military components to Israel while they commit a genocide against the Palestinian people. So my fear is that you are going to use this as a propaganda jamboree to justify what we know you've committed to which is getting rid of the Irish triple lock, removing obstacles to the deployment of Irish troops where there isn't a UN mandate for doing so. When Europe is pushing for greater militarization, greater spending on weapons and is arming a genocide in Gaza. So my question is will you stand up for neutrality, will you oppose the EU militarization agenda and their complicity with genocide or will you cater to the agenda? For Small Deputy, Ireland will be assuming the Presidency of the European Union. Our three fundamental pillars of our Presidency will be competitiveness, values and security. On competitiveness, we're looking for a capital markets union. We will try and advance that agenda in terms of enabling Irish small to medium-sized companies get access to a far greater degree of venture capital in Europe. We hope that we can establish, which Commissioner Michael McGrath is pursuing, the 28th regime or the European Inc which is basically the SMEs, small companies who would be establishing on a pan-European basis from day one. We want to deepen the single market because Irish workers and people have benefited from the single market. We also want to enhance and simplify regulation to enable economic growth across the European Union. The European Union has been transformative for Ireland since we joined in 1972 and 1973. Sorry, voted in 72, joined in 73. It has been a transformative experience economically for Ireland and Ireland enjoys probably amongst most populations across Europe the highest pro-European union sentiment on a consistent basis over the years. Many on the left have opposed the European Union and many of you have opposed every single treaty to do with the European Union. That is your right and your entitlement. But Europe is a far broader story than the one you have painted. Fundamentally, we will be endeavouring to see if we can help the agenda of making Europe more competitive on the industrial front, technology front, to create jobs for people and to protect the jobs that Irish people already have. Many of our companies export into the European market. We export a lot of food into the European market. We export a lot of medical devices into the European market. We export a lot of pharmaceuticals into the European market. Real jobs, real Irish people depend on those jobs, depend on that market. You ignore all of that and you have consistently ignored it in the context of the European agenda. Let's come to what you claim re-arming and militarisation. What is happening? What happened in the last five years? Can you recall? Ukraine was invaded violently by Russia without any provocation. A total violation of the UN Charter. What has that created across the eastern flank? Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Estonia. How do you think they feel? They don't have the geographic isolation we have here or we're far removed. They have a far greater existential fear of Russia than you or I have, even though we should be concerned in terms of the capacity of technological cyber security, subsea cable sabotage, gas connector sabotage as well. The world has become much more complex, Deputy. But you ignore that all the time. There are parts of Europe that feel under an existential threat, don't believe that the US will be there for them when the time comes and therefore yes, they are enhancing their military expenditure and defence expenditure because of what happened in terms of Russia's behaviour. I spent much of last night conversing with a young man from Ukraine who fled here because he didn't want to be conscripted into the disastrous Ukrainian-Russian war and is fearful that he's going to be sent back there because Zelensky is asking that people of his age should now be sent back to fight on the front line where tens of thousands are being slaughtered in that disastrous war, of course started by Putin, but young men like him do not want to fight in that disastrous war. You didn't refer to the document I mentioned, but let me quote from it. The moment has come for Europe to rearm. We need, quote, a massive increase in European defence spending. That's what's being urged by Ursula von der Leyen and the EU at the moment, to double arms expenditure from about 400 billion to 800 billion at the same time as Europe is exporting about 800 billion worth of arms to Israel to commit genocide. We're a neutral country. That's about opposing militarism and war and so on. Are you going to speak up against that? Are you going to oppose the militarisation agenda? Oppose the shameful complicity with the genocide? First of all, we will uphold Irish military neutrality. There's no issue with Irish military neutrality. There's been no attempt to undermine Irish military neutrality by Europe or by anybody else, for that matter, and you should stop scaremongering in respect of it. We're not joining NATO anytime soon. We're not militarily aligned and we've no intention of joining any military group or bloc. That is Irish military neutrality. Sorry? Sorry, that's what it all... Sorry, you don't get to define it. You don't get to define it. And if you had your way, you wouldn't have an army at all. I mean, you said that to me one day here on Question Time. I want to ask you straight out, did you believe we should have a military at all? Yes, you did. Well, OK. I'm glad now maybe you accept that we might need some sort of military or defence capability. But in any event, Deputy, just to say, OK, there's not unanimity across Europe. There's disagreement on Palestine. But Europe still remains the biggest donor to Palestine globally, the biggest donor to Palestinians in terms of supporting Palestinians across the board from the PA to the ordinary Palestinians in terms of the vital essential services that they require.