I dont know if this has been said yet, Im not reading anymore pages to find out. Ireland only officially became a Republic in 1937. For almost 800 years prior to that it was part of Britian or a British dominion. Their rule upon Ireland was brutal (Google "Black and Tans", has nothing to do with race btw) and as a result the "Crown" was extremely unpopular in the 26 counties of the Republic. When WW2 broke out in September 1939, Ireland was desperatlely trying to establish itself after such a long period of servitude (thats basically what it was, anyone who say otherwise is lying) and didnt want to involve itself in matters externally. As a result a position of neutrality was declared and the Treason Act 1939 was passed into law, which allowed the death penalty for "anyone levying war against the State".
However this may be the case, many tens of thousands of now free Irishmen chose to serve on the side of the Allies (the Government didnt restrict citizens from joining armies from beligerrent nations). Irish military coordinated with British Military to ensure Ireland wouldnt be used by the Germans to attack Britian and shared intelligence with Britian related to such. Ireland also refused captured British weapons, military aid in (6 counties still British) Northern Ireland and money from Germany, despite hundreds of years of British oppression.
Anyways this post could turn into an epic one, but the main point is that despite Ireland being a 2 year old State in 1939, having dealt with hundreds of years of oppression from Britian, we still "assisted" the Allies by allowing new Allied planes transit over our airspace to Britian provided they were not on combat missions, we made assurances that Ireland wouldnt be used by Axis forces and even refused aid from Germany despite being a poor country, that just because we declared ourselves neutral and didnt become directly involved in combat operations (which we are too small to have really helped in) we still helped out the Allies and with a huge Irish descendancy in America we were never going to side against the Allies regardless of what how much the Axis offered.
So before people spout about Irish neutrality in WW2, could they please perhaps learn something about Irish history and why we made that decision, and how regardless of our neutrality we still gave preferable treatment/important information/volunteers to a nation that less than 14 years ago was our 800 year sworn enemy just because it was morally right? Thanks.