The following article by W. Owl was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
IN his piece last Saturday in the Irish News Patrick Murphy quoted Robert Emmet who in a speech prior to his execution in 1803 said that his epitaph should not be written until Ireland had taken her place among the nations of the earth. Murphy wrote that rather than having an independent voice on the world stage through its foreign policy, Irelands is now an anonymous sub-section of what might be termed the Western powers, which includes Britan, the EU and the USA and to that extent its foreign policy is now made in foreign countries.
So where, you ask, it the evidence for such a sweeping statement? He answers that there is plenty of it citing that last week Micheal Martin visited Ukraine and gave £106 million to counter what he called Russia's "war of aggression." Since 2022 Ireland has given Ukraine £571 million, which according to the statistics agency Statista, has suffered 16,431 civilian casualties in the war. In roughly the same period Ireland gave £123 million to Palestine which, according to the same agency, has lost 72,945 civilians in Israel's war on Gaza. So, Ireland has donated about four times as much aid to Ukraine as to Palestine, even though Palestinians have suffered roughly four times more casualties.
As of February, this year, 121,048 Ukrainian refugees had been registered in Ireland. However there in no equivalent system for Palestinians. He writes that this is not to suggest that Ireland should not help Ukraine. It raises the question as to why Ireland should treat one set of victims more favourably than another. The answer, he adds, lies in its foreign policy, which was made in Brussels, with significant input from Washington. It effectively states that Russia is Ireland's enemy and Israel is not to be annoyed. While Martin was in Kyiv President Connolly signed into law the Occupied Territories Bill in Dublin. It bans trade with illegal Israel settlements in Palestine, but only for goods (30% of the trade) and not for services (70%) He tells us that the bill was introduced by Senator Francis Black in 2018 but took eight years to become law and does not apply to the main state of Israel. This is because the EU has a £595 billion trade agreement with Israel which Ireland must honour. The EU has announced its 21st package of sanctions against Russia, which is why Ireland has declared its enemy. Murphy then writes that since 2021 the Irish central bank has been issuing Israeli bonds which finance its genocide in Gaza. The bank is owned by the Irish government. It was able to off load them last year to Luxemburg, but their central bank passed the responsibility back to Ireland from September this year. The Irish Central Bank says it would be breaking EU law if it did not agree to issue the bonds.
He then deals with Aughinish Alumina plant in Limerick in which he claims that Ireland has abandoned its neutrality and could see the loss of 2000 jobs. We have referred to that situation in the pages of Unity a number of times but as Murphy points out the government has commissioned a report on whether alumna is finding its way to Russia but has refused to publish the report instead has sent it to Brussels.
However, the Irish Times received a leaked copy which was inconclusive. Murphy thinks the leak may have come from Brussels in order to put pressure on the Irish government to end any possibility of alumina from Ireland reaching Russia. There has been no call, he writes, to investigate whether any of it may go to European states for manufacturing arms to be used against Russia-or in Gaza.
He concludes by writing that in 1992 the County Clare hurling team were sponsored by Russian state airline Aeroflot. The letters on the jersey were even in the Cyrillic alphabet. Russia was not an enemy then because neutral Ireland had no enemies.
His last line was, it's a long way from Clare hurling to here but that's modern Ireland for you and if Robert Emmet was looking down on it all he may have despaired that anyone will write his epitaph.