Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----but it has everything to do with the incapacity and the paralysis on the Security Council around peacekeeping missions. We have a proud peacekeeping record in this country. We are in UNIFIL in Lebanon. There are examples where we were not in a position to help. In 1999, a permanent member of UN Security Council vetoed the renewal of the United Nations preventive deployment force and as the subsequent EU peace operation in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia did not have a Security Council mandate, Ireland was also unable to participate in that mission.

More recently in 2015, the EU established a security mission in the Mediterranean Sea known as Operation Sophia. This mission did not have a UN mandate until 2016 and Ireland could not consider contributing to this mission until after the mandate was in place. In 2017, the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (Narcotics), which is an international maritime intelligence centre supported by the European Union, requested a Naval Service ship to assist with maritime drug interdiction operations. Although Ireland is a strong supporter of the centre and was in fact one of the founding members, a ship could not be sent given that there would be no UN mandate for such an operation. So there are examples. There has not been a UN peacekeeping mission mandated by the Security Council since 2014. Despite the misleading assertions by Deputy Smith, we are basically proposing the removal of the UN Security Council sanction but we have made it crystal clear that anything we do will be within the UN Charter.

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