I commend the peace and anti-war protestors who have challenged the shocking bias of the Government’s so-called forum on security matters, which is heavily stacked with people who are pro NATO and pro EU militarisation and has almost no voices of those who are concerned about and warning against the Government’s de facto pulling of Ireland closer to NATO, an alliance dominated by powers that have a bloody history of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and many other places. Is it not a bit Orwellian for the Taoiseach to say we are not getting involved with NATO and our neutrality is safe when we recently had NATO commanders in Cork assessing our troops and we are involving ourselves with NATO through the permanent structured co-operation, PESCO, and battle groups? Does it not make the Taoiseach’s commitments about protecting neutrality completely hollow?

Not really. It is very clear. We are participating in PESCO. We are founder members of PESCO. We had a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. People voted for it. I was proud to lead us into PESCO during my first term as Taoiseach. PESCO is the European structured co-operation on defence and security. We are not going to join NATO, but NATO is made up of many countries that are allies, for example, EU states, the UK, the US and Canada. We co-operate with them through the Partnership for Peace and have done for more than 20 years.

The UK's record is not brilliant, is it?