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

Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

To be clear on what our troops will be doing, they will be doing peacekeeping, peace enforcement and conflict prevention. That is what the law says; not what the Deputy imagines it to be. We are bound by our Constitution and international law. The legislation changes nothing in that regard. Ireland has been a member of Partnership for Peace for more than 25 years. We heard the same scare stories more than 25 years ago about Ireland joining Partnership for Peace but people do not seem to realise we are in it. Some Members who sit on the benches opposite visited our troops in Kosovo where they are engaged in incredibly important peacekeeping work. That is a NATO operation operating under a UN mandate. Our troops have been there for more than 20 years and are doing an excellent job. We are very proud of the work they do in what are often very dangerous circumstances.
Let us be 100% clear: our troops will only ever do peacekeeping, peace enforcement or conflict prevention in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter and, of course, as with every action of this Government, in accordance with the Constitution. We cannot go beyond our Constitution and Article 29. We want to continue the role we have played. That role is unfortunately coming to an end for the vast majority of our troops. The number of Irish peacekeepers will reduce by approximately 90% because of the triple lock requirements and the inaction of the United Nations. Deputy Murphy said he does not believe Irish troops will be sent out to war, etc., and he is absolutely correct in saying that-----

---

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