The following letter from Shannonwatch member Edward Horgan was published in the Irish Times, Irish Examiner and Daily Mail. It sums up our position on Ireland's securing of a seat on the UN Security Council.

Our Irish diplomats are to be congratulated on the success of Ireland’s campaign for membership of the UN Security Council. It would have been a travesty if two more NATO countries had been elected in addition to the three NATO countries, US, UK and France who are permanent members of the Security Council. The primary role of the UN is to maintain international peace, yet those three permanent members have abused their powers of veto to usurp the role of the UN and wage wars of aggression with impunity since the end of the Cold War. These wars have caused the deaths of millions of people, including an estimated one million children, in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and the US, UK and France are supporting conflicts in Yemen, Palestine and elsewhere.

Successive Irish governments have been silent in failing to criticise these wars of aggression and have allowed the US to misuse Shannon airport to wage these wars. The recently published program for government makes reference to ‘active military neutrality’. Active neutrality should not mean actively supporting wars.

On 29 May 2020 in Ireland’s opening statement to the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA), Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason said “we are an independent neutral country beholden to no one”. Our independence and our neutrality have been recklessly compromised. We have become beholden to the successive US government administrations in a manner that threatens our historical friendly and kinship relationships with the people of the United States. Ireland’s two-year membership of the UN Security Council should be used to restore Ireland’s credibility as an independent neutral state and towards restoring the UN to its proper role of maintaining international peace and justice.