Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-16
============================================================

Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

When the Minister of State referred to office roles in Brussels, was he describing roles in NATO headquarters?
The international forces the Minister of State is describing are exactly like the coalition that invaded Iraq. It was clarified at the defence committee that, should the triple lock not have been in place, we would have been in a position to deploy troops to Iraq.
I again go back to the point that the Government's whole argument on this is dependent on the fact that it continues to maintain it supports neutrality. Once we cut that out from underneath its argument, everything else collapses. I maintain that is indeed the position. What the Minister of State is describing about the triple lock being this big bad beast that is preventing the Government from doing everything is just not true. What is true is that the Government wishes to pivot from peacekeeping towards the deployment of troops for regional interests. That is the actual truth. Once we start to pick that apart, it is clear the public does not agree with the Government. In poll after poll, members of the public do not agree with it. Councils throughout the country do not agree and have voted to protect the triple lock. The Government's backbenchers are revolting; they too do not agree.

---

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/dail/2026-07-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:17+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-16