Defence Forces Dail Éireann — 2024-05-16 ============================================================ Gino Kenny (PBP), Dublin Mid-West I do not trivialise the situations the Irish Defence Forces have encountered but there is a distinct narrative by the Government that Irish neutrality is up for grabs. The Tánaiste can shake his head all he wants but the rhetoric coming from the Government and EU leaders is that we are almost in a pre-war situation in Europe. We in the Opposition have been very concerned about this rhetoric and the militarisation of Europe. This is why we hold neutrality sacred. We do not want to be drawn into any imperialist war that could take place on mainland Europe. This is why we believe the triple lock is important to keep and not to compromise. The Tánaiste wants to compromise the triple lock. He wants us to have a double lock. This is concerning with regard to the overall strategy of neutrality in Ireland. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-05-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:57+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-05-16