Pickets are to be mounted at next month's Fianna Fáil ardfheis over the US military's use of Shannon.
The fourth anniversary of worldwide protests against the US attack on Iraq was marked today by activists and politicians who promised to step up their campaign during the forthcoming election.
Around 150,000 people protested around Ireland at that time against the war, which has left the US mired in a conflict with an ever-increasing cost in terms of lives, money and international security. Tens of millions protested worldwide.
Richard Boyd Barrett of the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM) said today that campaigners would make the US attack and its force's use of Irish facilities an election issue.
A poster and leafleting campaign will be carried out, and activists will hold a national demonstration outside Fianna Fáil's ardfheis in Citywest on March 24th.
Mr Boyd Barrett claimed the campaigners have been vindicated by the death toll in Iraq and by popular sentiment. He noted that opinion polls showed the US public "want their boys brought home.
"Public opinion in Ireland decisively opposes the war and occupation and the use by the US military of Irish airport facilities. Yet the Government parties have continued to arrogantly ignore the wishes of the Irish people, trampling on Irish neutrality," Mr Boyd Barrett said.
Sinn Féin international affairs spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh said his party would raise the issue on the campaign trail.
"The upcoming election gives the electorate the opportunity to send a clear message to the current Government, and those parties who implicitly or explicitly support the war, that the majority of Irish people oppose the continuing occupation of Iraq," Mr Ó Snodaigh said.
His party would not share power in government with any party that allows Irish airspace of facilities to be used by "any foreign military engaged in any activity other than that strictly endorsed by a UN mandate," he added.
He was speaking at a media conference attended by, among others, Michael D Higgins of Labour, the Green Party's John Gormley, and Independent TD Tony Gregory.
Mr Higgins said the Government had said little about a recent United Nations statement that over 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed last year.
The Government had "turned a blind eye" to the CIA's rendition programme thereby making Ireland complicit in the torture of suspects," he said.
"The supine response of our Government to the atrocities in Iraq is a national disgrace, and the Fianna Fáil/PD acquiescence to the use of Irish airports, notably Shannon, by US military and militarily-leased aircraft is gutless in the extreme," Mr Higgins said.