Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Murphy is correct. It does not make any sense. It is totally illogical to say that we will operate within the UN Charter and, at the same time, we want to break free of the UN Security Council. They are part and parcel of the same package.

The Tánaiste has gone back to when he was aged 12 and how he remembers the campaign and how we threatened that there was going to be troops on the street and conscription. I am probably a bit older than the Tánaiste but I certainly would not have been talking about conscription. The Tánaiste has a great memory. In 2013 - when he was not 12 - he was on the opposition benches and he said the triple lock was at "the core of our neutrality" and he explicitly rejected the argument that it gives the veto to Russia or China over our peacekeeping activities. Now the Tánaiste is saying the opposite and what he really means is that everything changed with the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Putin, we are now facing a new, splintered new-style colonial world where wars are on the brink, we want to be able to engage with other countries and possibly with NATO eventually, but definitely with the European Union which has the Government's ear all the time, and we want to engage in military activity with them. I want the Tánaiste to tell us where he wants to send troops. Will it be the sons and daughters of Irish working-class people who will be sent abroad to lose their lives? I do not believe it will be the sons and daughters of the people on the benches opposite me. The Tánaiste needs to tell the people that. He could make this a general election issue. If the Government does not want to have a referendum on neutrality, it should at least wait until the general election and change the Fianna Fáil manifesto from what it gave to people in 2020 to one that says, "I want to get rid of the triple lock and I do not believe in our neutrality."

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