Sir, – Ireland should not use the excuse of neutrality to shirk its responsibilities to the world.
With so much internet traffic travelling through cables in Irish waters, the least the world can expect is that Ireland will make a serious commitment to protecting this traffic.
It is stunning to hear that the Irish Naval Service now has only two vessels capable of protecting Irish waters (“Naval Service left with two ships to patrol Irish waters due to manpower crisis”, News, August 23rd).
With a war in Europe and Vladimir Putin willing to blow up undersea cables and aircraft, doesn’t any Irish government have a moral obligation to protect its territory, whether as part of Nato or not?
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
The Irish economy depends on foreign companies locating in Ireland and paying tax to the Irish authorities.
Surely the least these companies deserve in return is an honest effort to keep their communications safe.
That is also in Ireland’s interest.
Ireland should spend more time thinking about its obligations, not just its rights, in a global economy. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’REILLY,
Northport,
New York, US.
Sir, – In relation to Conor Hogarty’s letter of August 24th, while it is true that Ireland has “never been strictly neutral”, and while neutrality has been seriously undermined by allowing the US to use Shannon Airport as a military base since 2002, large majorities of Irish people have consistently demonstrated their opposition to joining military alliances (this was for example the reason the Nice Treaty was first rejected in 2001). The Supreme Court in the 2003 Horgan case claimed that the Constitution does not legally bind the Government to international law, thereby making it a mere “rule of thumb”. In response to this ambiguity, the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution, in its 2003 report on international relations, recommended that the wording of Article 29.3 that “Ireland accepts the generally recognised principles of international law as its rule of conduct in its relations with other states” be amended by adding the sentence “and in its relations with individuals, and shall be bound by those principles save where provision is made to the contrary”. This sensible recommendation would bring Article 29 of the Constitution into line with both the justiciability of most of the rest of that excellent document, and with the repeatedly expressed wish of the vast majority of Irish citizens. – Yours, etc,
MARK PRICE,
Irish Anti-War Movement,
Dublin 2.