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

I am very happy to debate this with anybody. I am very happy to outline what is actually in the legislation. It will be published in due course. The legislation will be very clear. It will outline how we will deploy our troops for peacekeeping missions. It will outline how we will deploy them in line with UN principles and with international law. It will not allow for any other type of deployment that goes beyond those areas. It will allow for a smaller number of troops to be deployed to ensure that where our own citizens are at risk in conflict areas, they can be taken out, removed and brought home safely. Beyond that, to be very clear, nothing in this legislation will allow me, as Minister, this Government or anybody in it to decide we are going to send troops to a conflict zone to take part in a conflict. Let me be very clear that is not what this legislation is proposing. So, all of the misinformation and the attempts to suggest this is suddenly going to open us up to becoming a warmongering country is completely wrong, completely inaccurate and is trying to sow a level of misinformation that muddies the waters here.
The legislation is very clear. How do we make sure we can continue to deploy our troops in peacekeeping missions? How do we make sure that other countries - Russia, the US, China, France or the UK - do not have a say in how we deploy our troops? How do we make sure that we, as a sovereign nation, the people here, democratically elected to this Chamber, are the ones who decide, with the advice of the Defence Forces, on exactly how we deploy our troops to peacekeeping missions? That is what the focus of this legislation is. I look forward to debating it with colleagues in this House and progressing it in the weeks ahead.

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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