Military Neutrality
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-07
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Seamus Healy (IND), Tipperary South

Neutrality and a triple lock have served his country well. The current Taoiseach is on record as saying that the triple lock is the core of Irish neutrality. Of course, that neutrality goes back over 100 years to when James Connolly erected a banner on Liberty Hall declaring that, "We serve neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland". It also goes back to hugely successful protests against conscription in Ireland during the First World War. It goes back to Article 29 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, Éamon de Valera's Constitution, which speaks of "adherence to the principle of the pacific settlement of international disputes by international arbitration or judicial determination." It goes back to Éamon de Valera's declaration of neutrality in 1939.
The triple lock itself has been endorsed by the sovereign Irish people in two referendums, the second referendum on the Nice treaty and the second referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Solemn national declarations have been added to those treaties. Successive polls have shown support for the retention of neutrality, the core of which is the triple lock. I believe it is now time to abandon this proposal. Of course peace missions can be authorised by the UN General Assembly as well as the Security Council.

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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/2026-05-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-07