I thank the Chair for giving me the opportunity to raise the question of the criteria which are used for ensuring that vessels which visit our ports do not carry nuclear weapons. There is a feeling that, at long last, the world is coming to its senses about nuclear weapons. The Minister and everyone in this House have spent all our adult lives in the shadow of nuclear destruction.
Many of the great artists of this part of the 20th century, the post Second World War 20th century and, indeed, some people who would be closer to medicine than they are to art in many ways, have written and speculated about the effect on the human psyche of this threat of mass destruction. Many people have written at length about the fact that humanity's vision of its future must almost inevitably be melancholic because of the threat of mass destruction.
We have had so many images of what nuclear war and nuclear weapons can do that it is almost pointless now to reiterate them. We have heard about the nuclear winter. We have heard about the unborn generations who will show the consequences of nuclear war in horrible and tragic genetic mutations. We have seen the consequences of Hiroshima. Anybody who has seen the pictures drawn by the children of Hiroshima of what Hiroshima was like after the bomb must ask a few fundamental questions.
The most fundamental question of all is the question of the possession of nuclear weapons because humanity has rationalised nuclear weapons far too easily for itself. It has rationalised them in terms of deterrents and in terms of the appropriately abbreviated mutual assured destruction which abbreviates to MAD, which is a particularly appropriate abbreviation. That word MAD and the associated word, madness, is a less than adequate description for humanity's willingness to even contemplate the use of nuclear weapons. There is no point in talking about deterrents if they do not involve the consideration and acceptance of the willingness to use nuclear weapons. It is one of the great moral failures of the late 20th century, which has characterised virtually all the Christian Churches, that Churches which are able to give specific moral guidance on issues of far less destructive capability, have never been able to offer ordinary people moral guidelines about the inherent morality or otherwise of nuclear weapons.
I raise this matter in the context of what nuclear weapons represent, both in terms of a physical threat and also psychological threat, in the context of our continuing and quite justifiable concern about the British nuclear industry not far away from where we stand, about the obvious indifference of that industry to our welfare and our concerns, about the proposal to build yet another nuclear power station, about the fact that Sellafield is not as we all know in this country and recognise, simply a civilian plant but is, in fact, inherently a nuclear weapons grid production plant which manages to minimise the cost of that nuclear weapons grid plutonium production by becoming a service to civil powers. It is inherently and fundamentally a military project. It is, if your like, the breeding ground, to coin a phrase, of nuclear weapons.
We are quite rightly concerned not just any more about the danger to the Irish Sea of discharges but of the inherent instability of Sellafield. This is where something of a professional interest of mine could do with being elaborated on. The problem with Sellafield is not that it is a limited threat but that it is an infinite threat. We do not know what the limits of the destruction to our environment would be following a serious incident in Sellafield. We still do not know, and will not know for generations, the intensity of the damage to the environment, and indeed, to future generations from the Chernobyl accident.
The problem about nuclear power and about nuclear weapons is that there can be no acceptable risk when you are dealing with nuclear weapons. My other profession deals in assessing risk and in determining what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. The fundamental question is that the benefit to humanity must be proportional the risk involved. The risk from nuclear weapons, is, in my view, infinite and, therefore, there can be no proportional benefits and they can never be justified.
I am not really arguing that because we all agree on this. Every member of every party in both Houses of the Oireachtas is against nuclear weapons. In many ways we have attempted to give specific expression in our national policies to that position. I must pay tribute to the Taoiseach who has frequently been extremely specific about his view on nuclear weapons particularly on any part of this island. We would all feel that any attempt, for instance, to station nuclear weapons within that part of this country which is under United Kingdom jurisdiction would be taken very seriously and regarded very gravely in this part of the island, and quite rightly.
One very specific statement of our abhorrence of nuclear weapons has been our stated policy of not wishing vessels which carry nuclear weapons to visit our ports. Of course, we all agree on that. Nobody really wants vessels which carry nuclear weapons visiting our harbours. The idea is upsetting, distressing, disturbing and also the fact of our revulsion against such weapons is well expressed by such a view.
A difficulty has arisen consistently in this country with successive Governments. It is because we have had a change of Government that I am hoping for a more specific assurance than we have had in the past. Nobody has ever been able to explain how the fact that we do not wish vessels which carry nuclear weapons to visit our ports has actually been conveyed to those vessels before they visit our ports. We have quite enough problems without these instruments of death being stored close to the centres of all our major cities. That is what happens when these courtesy visits take place.
In expressing our polite aspiration we do not do an awful lot to enforce what we want. The fundamental fact of nuclear chess, if you want to call it that, is that no nuclear power in the world will ever confirm or deny whether a particular vessel does or does not carry nuclear weapons. Furthermore, as New Zealand — I mention New Zealand because it is, like ourselves, a small country and a very brave country — has discovered, insistence on a nuclear ban can cause great upset. There have been few more offensive spectacles in recent years than the spectacle of the United States of America attempting to intimidate New Zealand into changing its policy on nuclear vessels visiting its ports.
Quite simply, when you come to the nuclear powers, if you ask they will not tell and if you insist on asking and finding out, they simply will not come. I do not think that would be a particular tragedy. We are not a member of a military alliance although, in the light of last year's referendum, I am not so sure how far we are away from one. As of now, we are not a member of a nuclear alliance or of any military alliance. I do not know why it would be such a tragedy if they would not come here.
The truth is, of course, that they still keep on coming here. We have had vessels with a nuclear capability — that, of course, is as much as we can be sure of — visiting Dublin and Cork in recent years, I would like to know about those vessels, particularly those that are publicly known to have a nuclear capability, has anybody asked about nuclear weapons. Has anybody told the commanding officer of each vessel of our nuclear free policy? I doubt it, because of what I have just said. No nuclear power will ever confirm or deny whether nuclear weapons are on board a particular vessel. If they will not tell us what is there, how can we enforce our position? We have not a clue about what is on board vessels which visit our ports. The tragedy of it is that, in the regrettable tradition on matters like this where there is a difficuly, we will, of course, say all the right things at home, keep silent abroad about enforcing our own policy, bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best. All this underpins the farcical nature of our neutrality and of our anti-nuclear stance.
While I said we all agree about the policy the Department of Foreign Affairs and successive Governments have been forced to choose. The choice is between a nuclear free Ireland and standing up to the nuclear powers of whatever political persuasion. This is not an issue of being either pro-west or pro-east; it is a question of being pro-life as against death. All of the nuclear powers possess the capacity to destroy us all. Therefore, if we are against nuclear weapons, all of us who are must be against all forms of nuclear weapons irrespective of where we see the good boys or the bad boys, or the good girls or the bad girls. The tragedy, of course, is that our leaders, up to now at least, it would appear, given their unwillingness to attempt in any way to either enforce or make known our policy on a specific vessel to vessel level, would prefer a shipload of death to harsh words from the US, USSR, France or any of the other countries that have a nuclear capabiliy.
This is not a big international issue requiring all sorts of high level diplomatic activity. We would simply have to inform the commanding officer of each vessel that we were nuclear free and request him not to offend that position. I find it astonishing that a similar decision by the Danish Parliament produced a general election. There is a peculiar lack of clarity of thought, a peculiar unwillingness to confront the horror of nuclear weapons and an attempt to dress it up in romantic talk about freedom or defence, two words which are denied by the very existence of nuclear weapons. The one thing that nuclear weapons will do is destroy us all and, therefore, destroy our freedom. The one thing they will not do is defend us; they will destroy others. They are not defensive weapons. They are, by definition, offensive weapons.
The Danes discovered that. When they decided they wanted to tell people commanding vessels: "We do not want nuclear weapons in our ports and please do not come here if you carry nuclear weapons", it provoked a general election. We will not have a general election about it, unfortunately, because nobody will ever do that. We will express here, particularly with an appreciative young anti-nuclear audience, our absolute commitment to being nuclear free. We will tell the whole world that we want Sellafield closed down because that is not here; it is over there; it is fixed and it is invisible. We will not do the simple thing. We will not say to the commanding officer of each vessel: "You must simply read this letter; we request you not to offend our position and do not come near us if you carry nuclear weapons". Nothing, could be simpler.
