Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

I thank the Deputy. I would say at the outset that times have changed. We should be allowed to debate the fact that we are in a different world now from when this was first introduced. At the time when the triple lock was introduced, those who opposed its introduction said that it was going to drag us into wars; that the US, Russia, China and the permanent member states of the UN were going to drag us, through the triple lock, into all these wars in which we were going to partake; and that we would lose our neutrality. These were debates that were actually put forward at the time. That did not happen. It did not transpire. We have had decades of peacekeeping troops on the ground that have contributed to peacekeeping missions and that has been it. What is now happening is that we have the bizarre situation whereby those very countries like Russia, which is waging a war, and the USA, which is obviously actively involved on the ground - I do not dispute that - are-----

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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