Tell us this: what is neutrality? That’s easy, you tell me. It’s when you refuse to belong to one camp or another, but remain firmly on the sidelines. Like, say, the Alliance Party.
Or Ireland’s southern state. Neutrality has been a treasured jewel in the state treasure-house. And we all remember Dev’s response to Churchill’s overtures, that the south of Ireland should join the Allies in the Second World War in exchange for a post-war reunited Ireland: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
But I’ve a strange feeling that neutral south of Ireland is better at posturing on neutrality than actually observing it.
Paul Murphy People Before Profit TD has questioned the south’s response to the invasion of Ukraine. He says the Irish government had taken part in five meetings of Ukraine contact defence group, “A group described by the US Secretary of Defence as a Nato alliance, a body which meets at Nato headquarters”
Murphy said the government was also involved in Pesco, an organisation that aims to produce common defence of EU members.
The Taoiseach said this kind of talk “makes my blood boil”.
Now, you may think it’s a jolly good thing that the south of Ireland is weighing in against Russia’s invasion, and you may even be right. But right or wrong, it still means that the notion of neutrality as observed by the south of Ireland is worth as little as Donald Trump’s word.
Oh, and by the way: did you know that one category of the south’s exports is given the code ML4? And guess what ML4 stands for? According to the latest issue of The Phoenix, it includes bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles. In 2020, the south exported ML4 category material valued at €3,280,000 to the US, while another half-million euro-worth was shipped off to Britain and Germany.
The doctrine of neutrality features in the Irish Constitution. Maybe it’s time we tore out that page.
It is not time to cut the page out but to observe neutrality.