EU Meetings
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

In relation to UNIFIL in particular, there are soldiers in it from all over the world. There were some deaths at the weekend. I pay tribute to them as well. That mission, which is a United Nations-run mission, will end. As far as I can tell, there is no other European Union country that needs a UN mandate to send their troops on peacekeeping missions. I have spoken to Switzerland and its troops can go on other missions, not just UN missions, for example. They deal with their neutrality in a different way from us. They do not need a UN mandate. If there were to be discussions in the future about a peacekeeping mission continuing in Lebanon, perhaps at the invitation of the Lebanese Government, most countries would be able to at least consider taking part, but we would not even be able to be part of the discussions. Last week, Operation Irini, which is an EU-led mission, lost its UN mandate. Our service members had to leave on that day, but the mission continues. Everyone else stayed but our people had to leave. That is what the triple lock has done. That is all we are trying to change in relation to that.

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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