asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will follow the example set by several local authorities on both sides of the Border, including Dublin and Belfast Corporations, by introducing legislation to have Ireland declared a nuclear-free zone.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Nuclear-free Zone.
42.
This country is bound by the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons not to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons, and there is of course no question of allowing other States to place their nuclear weapons here. The main characteristics of a nuclear weapon-free zone, which are non-possession, non-deployment and non-use of nuclear weapons, are therefore met in our case. I should like to make clear, however, that the concept of a nuclear weapon-free zone is understood internationally to mean arrangements to be free of nuclear weapons entered into by a group of States in a region. No State has alone declared itself a nuclear weapon-free zone.
I might add, in regard to nuclear weapon-free zones, that aside from the special case of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 which prohibits measures of a military nature in the Antarctic, the only nuclear weapon-free zone to be created by an international agreement is that established for Latin America by the 1967 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America.