Ireland’s neutrality is what sets us apart – it must be defended
■ I agree fully with Commandant Horgan (rtd) in his letter (Irish Independent, July 4) concerning the reluctance of our Government to highlight our neutrality in its campaign to obtain a seat on the UN Security Council.
Apart from the fact that, as a country, we have contributed with our Army to peacekeeping around the world, we have contributed
53pc in 2016 of our total overseas aid budget to multilateral organisations, principally the United Nations and the European Union.
It is that neutrality that makes our Army accepted by both sides in conflict zones, as Commandant Horgan tells us from his experience.
We owe a debt to Éamon de Valera for our neutrality. He agreed the External Relations Act of 1936 with Neville Chamberlain, also reclaiming the Treaty Ports.
Our neutrality came under pressure from Britain and the US during the war. In June 1940 and December 1941, he was offered “an eventual end to partition in exchange for participation in the war”, an offer he resisted, remembering how John Redmond got similar promises for recruiting 150,000 Irishmen –
50,000 of whom died.
The trauma of the 1941 blitz on a virtually undefended and unprepared Belfast, and the stories of the Dublin fire brigade’s help being sent to Belfast to quench the infernos, would strengthen the support for neutrality.
Irish neutrality, the declaration of the Irish Republic, and its decision not to join Nato, had distanced the independent State from the UK and European opinion.
But we should never be seduced by promises, even those of the EU to join the proposed European army.
For centuries before independence, as John Redmond states in his preface to ‘The Irish at the Front’, “Irish blood has reddened the earth of every continent”, and it should never happen again.
Protect our neutrality at all costs. Hugh Duffy
Cleggan, Co Galway