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

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.

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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