Neutrality and Triple Lock: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
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Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central

There is some irony in the debate tonight. This week President Donald Trump visited Ireland. Uachtarán na hÉireann, Catherine Connolly, made it clear the Irish people reject the normalisation of war and genocide. Our President is brave. She is a believer in peace and she stands up for what is right. A short while later, our Taoiseach met with President Trump and never used the word "genocide" for what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but still the Government wants to send Irish men and women to fight in foreign wars by getting rid of the triple lock. Where is the bravery in that? We saw real bravery from our President. We saw real bravery last weekend from Macklemore, who stood up and said, "Free Palestine". For that, they tried to cancel him, but you cannot cancel an idea. You cannot cancel justice and belief. He and Aaron Rowe, Beoga and all those other people stood together and said they would not be silenced for calling out genocide. Aaron Rowe's haunting "John's Song" could not be more relevant to what we are talking about today. It is about a young man fighting in a war he does not want to be in. It finishes with this:
Well, John, he never came home
He died at 21
They couldn't find his body in the morgue
But there's a headstone up in Thiepval
And it's scribed as Private Geoghegan
Son of Hugh and Ellen of Inchicore
We do not want Johns. We do not want headstones, graves and letters for working-class Irish men and women fighting in foreign wars. We serve neither king nor kaiser, but Ireland.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-16