2026-02-17

143. Deputy Sinéad Gibney asked the Minister for Defence to provide an update on the planned legislation to abolish the triple lock; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [12885/26]

I have not been quiet regarding my concerns around the Government's intention to remove the triple lock. What I find particularly frustrating is the repeated insistence that neutrality and the triple lock have nothing to do with each other and that they are completely separate, even in light of the solemn declaration made in the aftermath of the Nice and Lisbon treaties. They are clearly interlinked from that perspective. Can the Minister provide an update on her current plans when it comes to rowing back on the need for a UN mandate for the deployment of our troops.

On timelines, the defence (amendment) Bill 2025, which relates to how deploy our Defence Forces overseas, is included in the Government's legislative programme for priority publication during the current parliamentary session. The drafting of the Bill is continuing in conjunction with the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, and publication of the Bill is a key priority for me and for the Government in this term. Only in the last few weeks, I brought to Government amendments that had been proposed by the committee and amendments which I propose to take on board. I expect to bring the Bill to Cabinet for approval as soon as is possible following the conclusion of the drafting process and subsequently progress it through the Oireachtas. I can say as well that it also includes other amendments to the Defence Act to provide for the suspension, in certain circumstances, of members of the Defence Forces, as well as other smaller matters. The Deputy referred to the Nice and Lisbon treaties. While it is absolutely essential that we follow through on what was committed to at that time, what we have here is legislation that was self-imposed at that time as well at a very different time. I have spoken already in the Chamber of the fact that we are living in a changed world. We have more conflicts than we have had since the Second World War. We have a conflict happening on European soil. We now have hybrid threats that we have never seen before. However, we also have a changing relationship with partners when we would have never seen these changes taking place before. Never would any of us here have thought that the US would have blocked and prevented the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon from continuing in the way that it has. While the mission is continuing this year, it will end at the end of this year because a compromise had to be reached. If it did not end at the end of this year, it would have concluded last year. The vote would have gone to the UN Security Council and our troops would not be there. We are now in a situation with a country like the US where we have never seen this before, around the time of the Lisbon or Nice treaties or any other time in recent history. The idea that the US or any one of the five permanent members is able to dictate where we send our troops is not a situation in which we should be finding ourselves. If the Deputy looks at the figures, once our mission concludes in UNIFIL, we will have 85 troops on the ground in other missions. When we talk about our Defence Forces and how important they are and the work that they do, people think first and centre of a peacekeeping mission, troops on the ground and the proud tradition we have. At the end of this year, because we cannot partake in any other missions as there are no UN mandated missions, we will have 85 members partaking in various different smaller missions and in work happening on training and in other parts across Brussels. We need to change that. We have to respond. We have to take back our sovereign right to be able to deploy our troops where we want to. It will not impact neutrality because the law would be very clear. They must be for peacekeeping missions. However, there will also still be a check where it has to go through the Oireachtas but also where it has to go through our committees as well. It is really important that we have those checks and structures in place.

The Minister mentioned the word "sovereignty" there. This is a word I have heard used many times when people talk about this UN veto and how it is a threat to our sovereignty. I find it really inappropriate, if I am honest, to talk about sovereignty in that light because there are people in Ukraine and Gaza and in conflicts across the globe whose actual sovereignty is under threat. The idea of comparing a UN veto to our troop deployment as a threat to sovereignty in the same breath as we talk about people whose actual sovereignty is under threat is just not appropriate. What is sovereignty was the decision of the Irish people to instil in the Lisbon treaty and Nice treaty negotiations our triple lock. That was a sovereign act of this nation because it went to the people. We were offered the chance to become more entrenched in our European Union and when it went to the Irish people, they said, "Wait a minute, what about our neutrality?" Then, they said that, okay, if the Government can protect the neutrality with a triple lock then, yes, we will go for it. This time of increased global conflict is exactly what people had in mind. We knew that we were going to be pulled further into a European defence union. The Minister talked about that and compared it to the times of greater conflicts than we have seen since the Second World War. That is exactly the time that we need to double down on multilateralism and that is exactly what the Minister is walking away from by removing the triple lock and our mandate within that.

I respectfully say that we are not moving away from anything. In fact, if the Deputy talks to anybody in the UN, they will tell her that Ireland is one of the staunchest defenders of multilateralism and of the UN, whether it is peacekeeping or humanitarian work and support. We will continue to defend that but at the moment, the structure that we subscribed to is not working. At the moment, we cannot send our troops to missions because there have been no new mandated missions since 2014. In fact, there is not even a threat of a vote because they know that they are going to be pushed back on. I mentioned the UNIFIL mission. We had the mission in Macedonia and the Yugoslav republic. Because it did not have a Security Council mandate, we were not able to participate in that particular mission back in 1999. There was Operation Sophia, which was replaced by Operation Irini, which did not have a mandate until 2016. We could not join. We had the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre, which is an international maritime intelligence centre supported by the EU, something which we should absolutely be able to join given our geographical situation. Although we are a strong supporter of the centre, because it did not have a UN mandate, we could not join this operation. We are not able to join operations we should be a part of because of something we imposed on ourselves at a time when we were living in a very different world. I want to reassure people because of this suggestion that this will impact our neutrality. We cannot be clearer; I cannot be clearer. We are a militarily neutral country sending peacekeeping troops to places where they need us most. The Deputy is right, this is at a time when the world needs our support and where they need peacekeeping troops and that focus on humanitarian support and we cannot do it. We have no ability to do it. What I want to do is change that to allow our troops to continue what is a very proud and much needed tradition.

What the Minister is not saying is the fact that the triple lock can be satisfied by the General Assembly. No Government representative I have asked to demonstrate to me how the Government has attempted to use the General Assembly has given me any kind of clarification on that. It is not happening. The Government is just looking at the UN. Nobody on the Opposition here disagrees with the fact that the UN Security Council has issues. We all see that. However, the Minister is painting a picture that is simply misleading. The Government can go to the General Assembly and it can satisfy the triple lock through that mechanism. The Government has just not bothered to try. I just heard a few minutes ago this evening that the Trinity College Dublin, TCD, students' union has agreed a motion whereby it is putting to its entire student body a referendum to oppose the Government's plans to abolish the triple lock and actively promote anti-militarism. This is what we are asking the Minister to do because if she is so sure that the triple lock does not interfere with the deeply held tradition of neutrality in this country then please, just go to the people and ask them because that is where it came from. That is where it came from during the Nice and Lisbon negotiations, so the Minister by absolute virtue of that has to go back to the people and ask them once again if they are comfortable with what the Government is doing.

I ask the Deputy to tell me how this is actually going to impact on our neutrality because I have yet to have someone explain to me how sending peacekeeping troops is going to impact on our neutrality. We already partake in missions. We already partake in cybersecurity. We already partake in training missions. We already partake in other missions. We are not talking about an EU army. We are not talking about joining forces. We are talking about sending our peacekeeping troops. The General Assembly is not binding, so when I say that our legislation will be very clear that we must adhere to the UN Charter and international law, it is the same as putting something to an assembly that is not binding. We will comply with it, and we will have to go through the similar process where Government will have to agree. It will have to go through the Houses and for anything over 50 personnel, there will have to be very clear report to our Oireachtas committees to show them exactly why they were sent, where they were sent and to make sure that they operated within the parameters of the legislation that would be agreed to here. Again, however, I would ask the question. How does sending peacekeeping troops where there is a very clear mandate that it can only be peacekeeping and for no reason other than peacekeeping impact our neutrality when we are already doing it? This is all we are changing here. It is not who is deployed and how they are deployed. We are changing the way in which they are being deployed because at the moment, we simply cannot. I think the vast majority of people who I have spoken to who want us to continue in our peacekeeping missions see the challenges we are facing now and see the changes that have impacted our ability to do what we have always done and actually think it is a positive thing that we are making these changes.