Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-17
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Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

Again, I keep hearing in the Chamber this evening that we are not investing in the Defence Forces and therefore this is somehow related to the triple lock. The triple lock is about how we send our Defence Force personnel. At the moment we have 436 troops, as of 31 January, on peacekeeping missions. That has nothing to do with how many members we have overall, which is over 7,000. I will be the first to say that we need to be more ambitious in increasing our numbers and investing in our capacity, increasing our spending and funding, doing more for the men and women of Óglaigh na hÉireann, making sure we are investing in new technologies, amending our legislation so it is fit for purpose, and that is what we are doing here.
We have to look, review and revise our legislation and ask if it is fit for purpose. That is no different for the Defence Forces. Is this fit for purpose? No. What was the whole purpose of it? That we would be able to send our troops to missions within UN mandate. It is not required by the UN and it is not something it requires from other countries. We imposed it on ourselves at a time when we lived in a very different dynamic politically and otherwise. We now have a situation where one of five countries can essentially say no, they will not let us send our troops to a mission because they have decided they do not want it to happen. That cannot be the case.
I do not think Irish people want us in a situation that we now have no ability to send our Defence Forces, which are renowned worldwide for the decades they have provided service in peacekeeping missions, to new missions unless they have a UN mandate that is there. Even at that, if we look at some of the smaller missions in the western Balkans, there is a constant threat that those mandates will not be renewed. The 85 troops I mentioned that we will have at the end of the year will potentially be even fewer. We are talking about a structure. We are not changing the treaties. This is not about our neutrality.

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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