Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-16
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

I am curious as to why the Minister has chosen not to take this question. In her earlier exchange with Deputy Ó Laoghaire, she said that she welcomed debate. For continuity, I intended to pick up on some of the things the Minister said, so it is a shame that we are chopping and changing.
The triple lock and the UN constitute international law in action. That it is what we are looking at. It is not, as the Minister of State has reduced it to, a veto. That is not what is happening here. Throughout this debate, the Department and the Government have displayed a lack of appetite to reform the Security Council or to get General Assembly approval. They have tried nothing and yet they are all out of ideas.
The uniting for peace resolution has been used in the past. Any time we raise these as suggestions, they are batted off as being too hard or too complex but the Government has not made the effort. At a time when international law is so precarious and the United Nations is under so much pressure, this is not the approach we need. What we need is collaboration, co-operation and an upholding of the global order.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:17+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-16