The government has done a u-turn on its promise to have a Citizen’s Assembly to discuss Irish neutrality.
Instead, there will be a consultative forum composed of hand-picked “international figures”.
They will stack this with ‘experts’ who are already committed to eroding neutrality. With a Citizens’ Assembly, they have less control over the outcome.
This is a manoeuvre to chip away at the overwhelming popular support for neutrality.
It is part of a wider campaign to push us into either an EU military alliance or NATO.
In recent months the government is:
• Withdrawing Irish soldiers from the Golan Heights to join a German-led EU battle group.
• Sending Irish soldiers to Poland to train Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting a war.
• Making bellicose statements about stopping Putin, ‘when we stop him’.
In March 2022, People Before Profit introduced the Thirty-Ninth Amendment of the Constitution (Neutrality) Bill 2022.
This would have inserted neutrality into the Irish constitution and stopped the government in their tracks. No wonder they voted it down.
