Not surprised. Either result would require a lot of changes tbh, and I’d say it suits them to keep our whole “neutral, kind of, let’s not define it exactly” mentality going for now.
Boyd Barrett and Murphy are like angsty teenagers.
An utterly pointless and headline grabbing stunt by Rich Boy Barrett? Surely not!
The fact he keeps banging on about NATO and it’s “expansion (ie, sovereign democracies seeking protection from their former imperial power) when Russia is literally invading another sovereign nation exemplifies elements of the Irish Left who are so self centered, they can’t fathom a scenario where the US is not one of the primary factors.
I’m glad we’re not in NATO and it’s hardly a moral organisation but goddamn.
Good, it is an idiotic bill.
RBB is such a twat.
I get the vague outline of a crayon scribbled idea he has… If Neutrality is protected by the constitution then we cannot be dragged into any conflict by the EU or anyone else without a popular vote of the people.
But… he should know damn well that article 28 of the Irish constitution says
>3 1° War shall not be declared and the State shall not participate in any war save with the assent of Dáil Éireann.
so although our position of neutrality isn’t specifically protected, Our right to not be involved in a war (and to declare ourselves neutral to any degree we want) is.
And that means that unless the Dail do agree, Ireland as a nation cannot be dragged into a position of being at war by the EU or anyone else. It requires a majority vote of all members of the Dail.
However… Having constitutional neutrality would no doubt create massive blockages for Ireland to support countries that we see fit to support.
And that restriction would stretch significantly further than just militarily.
For a topical example… Ukraine.
Constitutional neutrality would open an avenue of objection for financial & humanitarian support. It would open an avenue of objection towards receiving refugees or even how we would vote on a fastrack EU membership.
Either RBB has lost his (limited) senses, or else this is just a daft headline grab and a vote that he’s throwing around to get people to pay attention to him because he’s feeling lonely.
Either way….. Twat.
I wonder do the people pushing this realise how expensive constitutional neutrality is? And I can’t imagine either RBB or Paul Murphy being happy with all the military equipment we would have to then go and purchase. Or the arms factory we would have to establish to supply our own munitions. Or the fact we would have to have some form of basic military training for all able bodied citizens. Because that’s what being constitutionally neutral is. It’s not just declaring you don’t take sides and then disbanding your army as you are so peaceful now.
RBB is a monumental twat
Good, the government also need to get rid of the triple lock mechanism that gives Russia a veto over our military deployments.
I wouldn’t be so confident that referendum wouldn’t backfire in RBB’s face.
Polls indicate a big shift since the time of the Lisbon treaty. And listening to pro-neutrality types, I don’t think they realise that and are very arrogant about it. To the degree, they don’t actually make coherent arguments why neutrality is a good thing, they just dismissing everything as “NATO bad”.
>People Before profit Richard Boyd Barrett
‘Nuff said. 🙂
I most surely would not under any circumstance have any faith in a government of Ireland which could actually decide to allow the country go to war.
People actually wanting us to join NATO, what the fuck are ye on because I’d like some too. We cant even afford to house ourselves or generate enough electricity but they want to spend money on weapons that benefit nobody.
Good, glad they have some sense.
Joining NATO is a commitment that our nation will go and fight people we don’t know for other people we don’t know. I’d prefer to pick my fights to be honest.
In any case, we’re an island of five million people. Argument can be made for the value of our culture internationally, but we’re a geopolitical rounding error in military and resource value. Our “allies” would be as aware of that as our “enemies”.
Neutrality without solid definition keeps us in the good books of most global powers. works in our favour whenever we need it.
not being neutral means we can bolster our army, which the overexcitable blow-in couch military historians get hard over.
Having looked at how well Ukraine have fared recently with the modern, lower cost, but high volume artillery and anti tank systems, as well as the cheaper Bayraktar drones, can anyone who knows anything about the military advise me on how Ireland would go about creating a situation, on a low cost high per item, but high volume purchase basis, to make sure no country would ever want to invade us? I’m not talking about having air supremacy, ground supremacy, or sea supremacy, but just get our military to a point where we can use modern equipment that is highly mobile and adaptable to make it so that we would be a nightmare to invade? The honest threat of invasion is so low, but there has to be solutions to having Russian planes fly into our airspace/sail into our waters etc. without needing to spend insane money on jets or aircraft carriers or tanks.
We have no fucking way of defending ourself. This is the right call, we can play the neutral card while not being neutral… Whether you agree with that or not is a other thing but let’s call a spade a spade. It’s our only option for now. We start spending big maybe we’ll be ok and able to be uild up a reserve force/army but we don’t have a functioning health service or transit system, we have no hope if we ever get attacked other than to wait for UK/US to jump in and the Ukraine situation is telling that the best we’d get is thoughts and prayers and sanctions.
There’s also a growing alt right crowd that seem to be anti everything with lots of YouTube channels and social media profiles and not much intelligence ( I’m not pro government by any stretch but if you say the sky is blue they’re so far down the rabbit hole they’ll tell you it’s red like a maga hat and something about communists and lizard people and antifa)
At some stage you have to trust the experts. Mary the local keyboard warrior who is banging on about Qanon should have no say in how this country defends itself against aggressors. She has no input or knowledge on the number of weapons we have as a country, what our strategy is for a terrorist/chemical attack or invasion., Etc.
What we should be having a referendum about is setting up a public body with the ability to investigate and audit the government in relation to government spending/tenders and transparency to insure the little funds we have are directed to the right departments.
County councils are a black hole of funds, no social housing being built but big contracts for their buddies construction firm. Same goes for RTE, paying for the coke bags of the presenters and the shit acting in fair city.
Spend that money on ‘reality’ shows like what hotel staff have to put up with on a weekly basis or how to cook food from Aldi cos you spent your money on rent and you gotta live off of 30 quid that week, not some interior decorator show trying to build a a jacuzzi out the back of a four bed mansion in the heart of D4.
Worth a vote surely?
Left wing nut jobs
Good.
We need a military before we can even consider a referendum.
If we joined Nato, would be the first time in my life I’d be ashamed to be Irish
I’m not up for join nato full stop, that’s us joining the bad guys. I mean we can fuck up russia the same way we can fuck up the us if we wanted or any other country for a reason. As the Irish we could be the moral arbitrators of the world with pain and displacement steeped in to our history we should define those who do not have a voice. To do this we don’t need to be apart of some packed we need to play our part on the world stage. We should be able to condemn actions taken by the US in Yemen, Israel and Russian vs Ukraine. Not join them. Our forces keep the peace support the nations of those who can’t protect themselves. We need to raise our voices and build and arm ourself. We should bring in defence funding for private companies to produce state of the art technology weapons technology here for our nation.
To break our sudo neutrality is joke and offence to this nation and what us Irish stand for. The solution to our defence is to protect ourself by joining the lesser of our foes but build, develop, and purchase our own military.
(Fun fact the tracking system for the iron dome was build in Ireland plus many of the tracking systems for Israeli weapons in the Heineken building in Dublin)
There is nothing wrong with the way things are now. Why change it.
It’s good to have the discussion, personally I don’t see any benefit in changing our stance. Investing in our defence forces doesn’t have to mean we scrap our neutrality, the two things are being purposely conflated to muddy the water.
26 comments
Good
Not surprised. Either result would require a lot of changes tbh, and I’d say it suits them to keep our whole “neutral, kind of, let’s not define it exactly” mentality going for now.
Boyd Barrett and Murphy are like angsty teenagers.
An utterly pointless and headline grabbing stunt by Rich Boy Barrett? Surely not!
The fact he keeps banging on about NATO and it’s “expansion (ie, sovereign democracies seeking protection from their former imperial power) when Russia is literally invading another sovereign nation exemplifies elements of the Irish Left who are so self centered, they can’t fathom a scenario where the US is not one of the primary factors.
I’m glad we’re not in NATO and it’s hardly a moral organisation but goddamn.
Good, it is an idiotic bill.
RBB is such a twat.
I get the vague outline of a crayon scribbled idea he has… If Neutrality is protected by the constitution then we cannot be dragged into any conflict by the EU or anyone else without a popular vote of the people.
But… he should know damn well that article 28 of the Irish constitution says
>3 1° War shall not be declared and the State shall not participate in any war save with the assent of Dáil Éireann.
so although our position of neutrality isn’t specifically protected, Our right to not be involved in a war (and to declare ourselves neutral to any degree we want) is.
And that means that unless the Dail do agree, Ireland as a nation cannot be dragged into a position of being at war by the EU or anyone else. It requires a majority vote of all members of the Dail.
However… Having constitutional neutrality would no doubt create massive blockages for Ireland to support countries that we see fit to support.
And that restriction would stretch significantly further than just militarily.
For a topical example… Ukraine.
Constitutional neutrality would open an avenue of objection for financial & humanitarian support. It would open an avenue of objection towards receiving refugees or even how we would vote on a fastrack EU membership.
Either RBB has lost his (limited) senses, or else this is just a daft headline grab and a vote that he’s throwing around to get people to pay attention to him because he’s feeling lonely.
Either way….. Twat.
I wonder do the people pushing this realise how expensive constitutional neutrality is? And I can’t imagine either RBB or Paul Murphy being happy with all the military equipment we would have to then go and purchase. Or the arms factory we would have to establish to supply our own munitions. Or the fact we would have to have some form of basic military training for all able bodied citizens. Because that’s what being constitutionally neutral is. It’s not just declaring you don’t take sides and then disbanding your army as you are so peaceful now.
RBB is a monumental twat
Good, the government also need to get rid of the triple lock mechanism that gives Russia a veto over our military deployments.
I wouldn’t be so confident that referendum wouldn’t backfire in RBB’s face.
Polls indicate a big shift since the time of the Lisbon treaty. And listening to pro-neutrality types, I don’t think they realise that and are very arrogant about it. To the degree, they don’t actually make coherent arguments why neutrality is a good thing, they just dismissing everything as “NATO bad”.
>People Before profit Richard Boyd Barrett
‘Nuff said. 🙂
I most surely would not under any circumstance have any faith in a government of Ireland which could actually decide to allow the country go to war.
People actually wanting us to join NATO, what the fuck are ye on because I’d like some too. We cant even afford to house ourselves or generate enough electricity but they want to spend money on weapons that benefit nobody.
Good, glad they have some sense.
Joining NATO is a commitment that our nation will go and fight people we don’t know for other people we don’t know. I’d prefer to pick my fights to be honest.
In any case, we’re an island of five million people. Argument can be made for the value of our culture internationally, but we’re a geopolitical rounding error in military and resource value. Our “allies” would be as aware of that as our “enemies”.
Neutrality without solid definition keeps us in the good books of most global powers. works in our favour whenever we need it.
not being neutral means we can bolster our army, which the overexcitable blow-in couch military historians get hard over.
Having looked at how well Ukraine have fared recently with the modern, lower cost, but high volume artillery and anti tank systems, as well as the cheaper Bayraktar drones, can anyone who knows anything about the military advise me on how Ireland would go about creating a situation, on a low cost high per item, but high volume purchase basis, to make sure no country would ever want to invade us? I’m not talking about having air supremacy, ground supremacy, or sea supremacy, but just get our military to a point where we can use modern equipment that is highly mobile and adaptable to make it so that we would be a nightmare to invade? The honest threat of invasion is so low, but there has to be solutions to having Russian planes fly into our airspace/sail into our waters etc. without needing to spend insane money on jets or aircraft carriers or tanks.
We have no fucking way of defending ourself. This is the right call, we can play the neutral card while not being neutral… Whether you agree with that or not is a other thing but let’s call a spade a spade. It’s our only option for now. We start spending big maybe we’ll be ok and able to be uild up a reserve force/army but we don’t have a functioning health service or transit system, we have no hope if we ever get attacked other than to wait for UK/US to jump in and the Ukraine situation is telling that the best we’d get is thoughts and prayers and sanctions.
There’s also a growing alt right crowd that seem to be anti everything with lots of YouTube channels and social media profiles and not much intelligence ( I’m not pro government by any stretch but if you say the sky is blue they’re so far down the rabbit hole they’ll tell you it’s red like a maga hat and something about communists and lizard people and antifa)
At some stage you have to trust the experts. Mary the local keyboard warrior who is banging on about Qanon should have no say in how this country defends itself against aggressors. She has no input or knowledge on the number of weapons we have as a country, what our strategy is for a terrorist/chemical attack or invasion., Etc.
What we should be having a referendum about is setting up a public body with the ability to investigate and audit the government in relation to government spending/tenders and transparency to insure the little funds we have are directed to the right departments.
County councils are a black hole of funds, no social housing being built but big contracts for their buddies construction firm. Same goes for RTE, paying for the coke bags of the presenters and the shit acting in fair city.
Spend that money on ‘reality’ shows like what hotel staff have to put up with on a weekly basis or how to cook food from Aldi cos you spent your money on rent and you gotta live off of 30 quid that week, not some interior decorator show trying to build a a jacuzzi out the back of a four bed mansion in the heart of D4.
Worth a vote surely?
Left wing nut jobs
Good.
We need a military before we can even consider a referendum.
If we joined Nato, would be the first time in my life I’d be ashamed to be Irish
I’m not up for join nato full stop, that’s us joining the bad guys. I mean we can fuck up russia the same way we can fuck up the us if we wanted or any other country for a reason. As the Irish we could be the moral arbitrators of the world with pain and displacement steeped in to our history we should define those who do not have a voice. To do this we don’t need to be apart of some packed we need to play our part on the world stage. We should be able to condemn actions taken by the US in Yemen, Israel and Russian vs Ukraine. Not join them. Our forces keep the peace support the nations of those who can’t protect themselves. We need to raise our voices and build and arm ourself. We should bring in defence funding for private companies to produce state of the art technology weapons technology here for our nation.
To break our sudo neutrality is joke and offence to this nation and what us Irish stand for. The solution to our defence is to protect ourself by joining the lesser of our foes but build, develop, and purchase our own military.
(Fun fact the tracking system for the iron dome was build in Ireland plus many of the tracking systems for Israeli weapons in the Heineken building in Dublin)
There is nothing wrong with the way things are now. Why change it.
It’s good to have the discussion, personally I don’t see any benefit in changing our stance. Investing in our defence forces doesn’t have to mean we scrap our neutrality, the two things are being purposely conflated to muddy the water.