Tánaiste and Defence Minister Micheál Martin has defended the decision to send Irish Defence Forces troops to train the Ukrainian military.
As part of the European Union Military Assistance Mission, 30 Irish soldiers will help to train the Ukrainian armed forces “in respect of their capability in military combat,” Martin said.
These include areas such as bomb disposal, removing mines, and providing medical aid. He added that this training will take place “on European soil.”
“It is not too great an ask for this country to make, and it does not threaten our neutrality in any shape or form, which is defined by non military alliance,” the Tánaiste said.
“We are not members of NATO, we have no intentions or any immediate plans whatsoever to join NATO.”
The remarks came after People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd-Barrett said that the move represented a “flagrant breach of our neutral status.”
He added that Ireland should be “using its voice on the international stage to call for peace, negotiations and to stop the terrifying escalation of this conflict that we are witnessing, which could bring the world to the brink of conflict.”
Boyd-Barrett further denounced NATO’s “bloody history,” and accused the alliance of planning to escalate the conflict “to the terrifying possibility that we could have a nuclear situation.”
Martin responded that these comments were “deeply disturbing and unfair.”
“You’ve asserted there in a very distorted manner, the idea that NATO wants to escalate the war on Ukraine to a nuclear status,” he said.
“That is a disgraceful thing to say and it’s a wrong thing to say.”
He added that Germany and France had done “everything they could to persuade Putin not to launch that war,” and that Russia is the only country that had suggested “the use of nuclear weapons in the context of this war.”
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