An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-23 ============================================================ Tom Clonan (IND), University of Dublin Déanaim comhghairdeas leis an gCeannaire. I am delighted to see Laura, his beautiful family and his dad here. While we differ on a lot of things, we have one small thing in common. His late mum and my late father both served the people of Cahir in different ways, my dad as a member of An Garda Síochána. I know his mum is proud of him and I ask him to go easy on me for the next couple of years. I raise the increasing levels of misinformation and, I am sorry to say, disinformation about the triple lock. As legislation on the triple lock approaches the Houses, that level of misinformation is accelerating. I want to be very clear about this. If we get rid of the triple lock, we will not have peacekeeping any more. By definition, it is not a blue helmet mission without a UN mandate. Think about that. We will be sending our troops away on missions no longer wearing the blue beret we are proud of or the blue helmet. They will not be peacekeeping missions; they will be peace enforcement missions. Even peace enforcement missions with a UN mandate - for example, the war in Korea, the Balkans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and, more recently, Afghanistan - developed into full fighting missions. Without the triple lock, we will not be sending our people on blue-helmeted missions. We will be sending them to fight. If you are fighting, by definition you are not neutral. The myth we can only send 12 personnel overseas at the moment and need to get rid of the triple lock is completely untrue, as was confirmed to the defence and national security committee last May by the Department of Defence. The idea Trump, Putin or Xi Jinping has a say in where we send our troops is a false narrative. It is a choice of the Irish people by sovereign decision of the Oireachtas and solemn declarations given in Europe that we would be bound - this is what the Irish people want - by the multilateral principles of the United Nations. A time when we are having illegal wars, for example, the strikes on Iran - reprehensible as that regime is - and the invasion of Lebanon, is not the time to walk away from the UN. I ask my colleagues in Fianna Fáil to, when they are at their parliamentary meeting tonight talking about this issue, ask where our troops will be sent. To suggest there is no link between neutrality and the triple lock is like saying there is no link between the steering wheel and the brakes on a car. --- 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/seanad/2026-06-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-23