Neutrality and Triple Lock: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
============================================================

Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West

I want to continue where my two colleagues left off and highlight that the Minister's tone was quite condescending. She said, "Make it make sense", as if what we were saying was unfounded, was ridiculous and it was quite demeaning coming from a Minister. When she talks about things that make sense, it was the Taoiseach she voted for who said in 2013 that the triple lock was "core" to our neutrality. Make that make sense. Yet, she just bats it away. We know, as the opinion polls show, that 71% of the people agree that Ireland's neutrality should be added to the Constitution. People are very clear. They value it. They want our neutrality maintained and that was the promise that the Minister and others made and committed to the Irish people.
She also talks about defending peace and international law, and for things to make sense. What does not make sense is putting in place an occupied territories Bill that does not include services. Make that make sense, when she is not actually putting in place and following the genocide law that should be applied to Israel. However, she is not prepared to do that.
Ireland has a long history of standing up for peace and against war. Tá stair fhada ag Éire agus í ag seasamh ar son na síochána agus i gcoinne an chogaidh. Ba cheart dúinn a bheith bródúil as ár neodracht thar na mblianta. We should be and we are proud of our history of neutrality. We should, as a country, be continuing to push for peace and not militarisation by working and supporting the United Nations and pushing the European Union and other institutions to resolve conflicts through negotiation, to respect the human rights of everyone, but we are not. We are moving along with the militarisation agenda, the ramping up of military spending.
Let us be very clear about who is pushing this. In 2015, the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte spoke to the European Parliament's committee on foreign affairs. He said very clearly that he wanted the European Union to be spending more on defence. We know Trump wants the European Union to be spending more on defence. What is the push at a EU level to be spending more on defence and creating a European military industrial complex? Who benefits and who loses? Mark Rutte made it very clear. He said:
...spending more on defence means spending less on other priorities ... On average, European countries easily spend up to a quarter of their national income on pensions, health and social security systems, and we need only a small fraction of that money to make defence much stronger ... We ... need to quickly ramp up the production of crucial assets and capabilities, including ships, tanks, jets, ammunition, satellites and drones.
This is not what Ireland should be promoting. We should be investing in our people's well-being and the health and housing of people across Europe, not weapons of death, and retaining our neutrality is central to that.

---

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/2026-09-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-16