Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
============================================================

Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

The Deputy has not quoted the Constitution, which governs everything we do. The Constitution states at Article 29:
1. Ireland affirms its devotion to the ideal of peace and friendly co-operation amongst nations founded on international justice and morality.
2. Ireland affirms its adherence to the principle of the pacific settlement of international disputes by international arbitration or judicial determination.
That is what governs this Government, it governs the Dáil and it governs our military. That is what we do. We do peace, we do friendly co-operation and we accord with the principles of international law. That is what we will do. If there are peace missions out there that are going to take place, perhaps at the invitation of countries affected, maybe Lebanon, we would like to be able to make a decision properly here in the Dáil, maybe involving an Oireachtas committee to examine every aspect of it. We want to make the decision here. We cannot allow countries that some of the Members opposite castigate to have a veto over our foreign policy decisions.

---

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/2026-06-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-09