Neutrality and Triple Lock: Motion [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16 ============================================================ Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West As others have said, neutrality has been part of who we are for centuries. Since the 1960s our nonaligned stance has allowed us to act as a moral honest broker, an advocate for peace and a supporter of proper humanitarian legal systems on the world stage. As an Independent TD, I believe we must protect that legacy but real neutrality is not free and being militarily neutral does not mean you do not take sides when evil things are being done, as they are in Gaza, in Ukraine and in other conflicts around the world, and as they were in previous conflicts. These conflicts are ones we have not supported or contributed to, except by searching for peace or through brave Irish men and women trying to keep the peace. Neutrality cannot mean isolation and it cannot mean being completely defenceless. For too long, successive governments and some Opposition parties have used neutrality as a convenient excuse to neglect our armed forces. We cannot protect our sovereign territory, our international waters or indeed our economic zone with platitudes. We must look at the reality of modern security threats. I am thinking of subsea cable monitoring and the boats that are hanging over, which could clip them in 30 minutes, the ongoing cyberwarfare, the trolls online trying to discredit our democratic system, the misinformation being spread and the ability to take out whole grids. That is a power belonging to some of the nefarious state and non-state operators. These and other sinister actions, like the explosions on the Ukrainian border recently, impact directly on Ireland whether we like it or not, so we have to invest seriously in our defence. We have to properly resource our Defence Forces, rebuild our Naval Service in particular and develop decent radar capabilities and proper deterrence against attacks. Obviously we are not going to be able to compete against an overwhelming military force and we would likely have to get into a war of attrition and a guerilla-type campaign but we should not be easily intimidated in our airspace, in our waters or on our land. If we do not invest in defending this critical infrastructure, it does not mean we are being neutral, it just means we are being vulnerable. As we have seen in media reports we are often relying, for this EU Presidency period, on foreign militaries to bail us out, using little tweaks so as not to breach our Constitution. There is an argument that being neutral also means we have to engage internationally with other forces when our security is threatened. If we are looking for this quid pro quo where our security depends on co-operation with other countries while we are not part of an aggressive military alliance and not taking sides in any operations, we need to get involved in some types of missions. Historically that meant the UN missions which are tied up now due to the Security Council dysfunction I will refer to in a moment. Taking the joint expeditionary force that was referenced, we have to be very cautious about these types of arrangements but I cannot blindly condemn it when it is going to give us intelligence-sharing to monitor our seas and we have an observer status, which is not joining an alliance. We can co-operate with countries and take part in certain types of operations while maintaining our neutral stance. That is possible but caveats have to be spelt out in terms of where we draw the line and a lot of us in Opposition groupings, including me, are cynical about whether that alliance is always going to be adhered to. I agree we need to safeguard neutrality while becoming militarily self-reliant. However, crucially and with respect to this motion in particular, we need to fix how we authorise our troops’ deployment as peacekeepers because, as I have said here before, the triple lock is broken. It served us well in the past but now it is just a concept because the third lock, which is the United Nations Security Council, is not fixable any time soon. It is very ironic that our sovereign foreign policy is currently vetoed by autocracies and global powers with their own geopolitical agendas which are aggressive in some cases, such as with Russia, or suspicious as with China, and then there is the United States. These countries should not be holding a veto over where Irish peacekeepers, with their proud history of nonaggression and fighting for peace, can deploy. Leaving our defence policy at the mercy of a dysfunctional Security Council does not protect our neutrality; it gives away our sovereignty. However, I agree with my colleagues in opposition that we need a triple lock, though the question is what type. I am open to suggestion but my view is we should replace the UN veto with a requirement for an 80% supermajority in the Dáil and Seanad so four fifths of the Houses must agree before deploying troops. That is another lock that would ensure the government of the day could not abuse our military or casually drag us into foreign conflicts. It would need an overwhelming cross-party consensus. I also believe that if some of our EU partners like Poland or the Baltic states were ever attacked aggressively by the likes of Russia, I do not think we can or should be neutral. That is my opinion, respecting our historical context. --- 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