Poll after poll shows Irish voters have a strong attachment to the State’s traditional policy of military neutrality.
Today’s numbers are no different. Asked if they support Ireland’s “current model of military neutrality”, almost two-thirds of voters (63 per cent) answered in the affirmative.
The alternative offered to respondents in the poll questionnaire – “I would like to see it change so that Ireland can take more responsibility for our own and Europe’s defence” – is not without support; 29 per cent of voters say they agree. But it is clear the attachment to the idea of neutrality remains strong among a majority of voters.
The trouble in navigating your way through all this in a world that has changed and become more militarily threatening, therefore requiring security and defence responses from governments, is that there is no agreed definition of what neutrality actually means.
For many of Ireland’s large and vocal band of pro-neutrality campaigners, anything that has involved security and defence co-operation with other countries, including EU partners, has either undermined Ireland’s neutrality or put paid to it altogether.
So they say that Ireland’s membership of Pesco – a series of programmes that forms the EU’s co-operation on defence matters – is contrary to the policy of neutrality. So is Ireland’s membership of Nato’s “Partnership for Peace”, which also involves some military co-operation with other countries but does not bind anyone to Nato’s bedrock common defence promises. So is allowing US military planes to land at Shannon for refuelling.
With the warnings about how all this has undermined Ireland’s traditional policy of neutrality, you’d wonder how it still exists at all.
The answer, of course, is that neutrality has in effect meant whatever the government of the day says it means.
That is almost certainly likely to continue to be the case. It is very unlikely, even in the current uncertain and threatening international environment, that the Irish Government would follow Finland and Sweden and formally abandon neutrality to join Nato.
But the Government is committed to doing more on defence and co-operating more with allies, especially on issues like maritime surveillance of the undersea cables that carry internet traffic between the US and Europe, many of which pass through Ireland’s waters.
What today’s poll suggests is that, to enjoy public support for the intensification of defence investment and co-operation with allies, the Government will have to convince voters that any changes are an evolution of the policy of neutrality, not a direct repudiation of it.
These and other poll numbers suggest this will not be easy – attachment to neutrality and its cousin, anti-militarism, remains strong.
But there is also a sense voters understand the world has changed. Asked about the triple lock – the barrier to sending Irish troops abroad without UN approval, which the Government is committed to removing – less than half of all respondents (47 per cent) say it should be kept.
True, a smaller number (37 per cent) want to dump it. But 16 per cent say they don’t know. The margin in favour of keeping the triple lock at present is clear – but it does not look insurmountable. A majority of Fine Gael supporters want to dump it and Fianna Fáilers are nearly evenly split.
On another international relations issue, the Occupied Territories Bill, the picture is also nuanced. The largest cohort – 43 per cent – wants the bill introduced immediately. But almost as many (40 per cent) don’t.
The Government has said it intends to introduce a bill – not necessarily the one currently before the Houses of the Oireachtas, which Ministers say is unworkable and unconstitutional – that is either a substantially amended version or a completely new piece of legislation.
Supporters of the Bill say the Government is just playing for time, fearful not just of Israel’s reaction but more acutely of United States opposition to the Bill.
There appears to be some understanding of this among the public. Of the 40 per cent of respondents who don’t want to see the bill introduced now, just 12 per cent say they want to dump the bill entirely, while 28 per say “hold off for now”.
They’re not saying “put the guns away”; they’re saying “hold your fire”. They’re not saying that they’re neutral – they’re saying let’s think about how our neutrality works.
