Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

I think the Minister is deliberately being a bit disingenuous by saying that, okay, this is agreed by legislation. She does not recognise the European referendums that enshrined this. We have the Seville declaration. It is part of international law. The Minister does not recognise that the people voted on this. That is forgetting about the recent presidential election where neutrality dominated the campaign.
That is forgetting about all the opinion polls that show that people support neutrality and support the triple lock.
The Minister might enlighten us then about the circumstances where she thinks it is legal to deploy soldiers abroad that do not have UN authorisation nonetheless are in the framework of international law? What is it that she is talking about? I cannot understand because the UN Charter is very clear. It is very clear about the circumstances where you can deploy troops abroad. You can do it in self defence or you can do it when there has been a resolution by the UN Security Council or the UN General Assembly. It is clear. That is precisely what the triple lock says. What I think the Minister wants to do is say that we adhere to international law but we do what we want and then we just say that it is in line with international law. When the US engages in its imperialist adventures around the world, it always says it is in line with international law. I think Putin claims that his invasion of Ukraine is in line with international law but there is a big difference.

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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