Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-24
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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

I am interested and pleased in a way that the Minister has been able to inform the House that this did not arise from the petrol strike. That is encouraging. It is very interesting that this was being considered beforehand, in any event. I believe, and I know this from such connections as I have with the Defence Forces, that they are very conscious of operating within the rule of law. The Defence Forces legal service is an elaborate organisation, which takes its national and international obligations very seriously. I have no doubt that the Defence Forces view it as important that what they do in the public sphere, particularly in aid of the civil power, has a basis in law.
We are very naive if we think that post the 1998 agreement there will never be an emergency in this State again. We just have to look at what could happen in Northern Ireland and in various other scenarios to understand that the unexpected cannot be predicted.
I will go back to a point that I want to emphasise. The Constitution says that "The Government shall meet and act as a collective authority, and shall be collectively responsible for [all] the Departments of State" under its remit. The notion that the Minister for justice and the Minister for Defence can, effectively, mount a coup on the phone is simply fanciful. They would not last a minute if they did that without the consent of the rest of the Government for what they were doing.
We have to remember that there is a legislative power, an executive power and a judicial power. I am sometimes very critical of lawyers in particular - I put the Judiciary collectively into this basket - and legislators who somehow deny that the executive power of the State is of equal importance with the other two. The executive power of the State is dealt with in the Constitution on an equal basis. A lot of people want to claw back from the Government any discretion, and want to try to make it subject to, first, statute, and, second, judicial supervision with a view to effectively saying that the executive power of the State is a residual power which is unimportant. When push comes to shove and in an emergency, the Government, the Defence Forces and An Garda Síochána must be available to uphold the civil authority of the Government. There are things that An Garda Síochána can do and there are things it sometimes may not be able to do, whether it is a search for the body of Michael Gaine, confronting the Don Tidey kidnapping or confronting other threats which existed.
It was not just a matter of Concession Road outside Castleblayney. I can tell the House that every single reservoir in the Dublin region was under military guard. Sewage treatment plants were under guard. Electricity substations and generating stations were under military guard, along with the airport and places like that in the 1970s. The Government at the time did not have to come into this House and seek authority in advance for doing what is necessary to uphold public safety. Anybody who thinks that it is in any way remotely correct that the two Houses of the Oireachtas should authorise in advance every single deployment of the Defence Forces in aid of the civil power is, in my view, mistaken.
The Minister for Defence operates through the Department of Defence, the military commands, and through the Defence Forces regulations in a highly regulated way. This section proposes that the Minister has a duty as a member of the Government to assist the Government in the maintenance of the security of the State and to maintain the authority of the Government collectively. Anybody who thinks that they can usurp the right of the Government to protect us collectively is deeply mistaken.
Going back to what happened after this head was approved by the Government – and I am glad to hear it was after it – and the arrogance of people who think they can go on radio and television and say they will bring the Government to its knees, no, people sitting in the cabs of lorries have no right to bring the Government to its knees. They have no right to wander around the country trying to assert that they themselves are somehow the equivalent of government with no mandate of any kind whatsoever. I will not go further but a lot of them were given plenty of platforms to articulate the view that they had a mandate to bring the Government to its knees. How mistaken, how anti-democratic, how anti-republican and how contrary to the rule of law all that was needs to be thought about repeatedly.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-24