Defence Forces
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-17
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

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.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-17