Memorandum on Ireland's position on the European Defence Community
by Sheila Murphy for Josephine McNeill (The Hague)

The Government has not yet had occasion to make a formal announcement of policy concerning the proposed European Defence Community. Not being a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Ireland, of course, was not invited to participate in the conference on the Pleven Plan for a European Army. (Germany was the only country outside NATO to be invited to the conference).

An indication of the attitude of the Irish Government towards the project for a European Army is, however, contained in statements made at Strasbourg by individual members of the Government. Speaking in the Consultative Assembly in August 1950 on the Churchill resolution calling for the establishment of a European Army, Mr. de Valera, then in Opposition, said:

…we are not free in Ireland … As long as that fact remains we cannot, no matter what international Assembly we are part of, go to our people and ask them to join in resisting aggression unless the aggression from which they suffer is also to be resisted.

Mr. Norton, at that time Tánaiste, spoke in the same vein.

The following year (November 1951) Mr. MacEntee, Minister for Finance, again referred to the Churchill Resolution as follows:

We, members of the Irish delegation, could not associate ourselves with that Resolution nor participate in the discussion of it. The reason which debarred us was stated at the time. I neither desire nor intend to state it again, though it is necessary for me to say that it still remains and that so long as it does remain, our people will not be disposed to range themselves voluntarily or whole-heartedly behind any project for the formation of a European Army, any more than it has permitted us to associate ourselves with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.