Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No. What I am saying is that there are other mechanisms that we could use to reassure Irish people that we are sending troops on missions that are consistent with the objectives of the UN, those being, peace support and peacekeeping. Perhaps we can have that debate in the autumn; we are not going to have it now. I am just signalling that there are issues that we have to be mature enough to recognise and discuss without going down the avenue of claiming that the end of the triple lock means an end of Irish neutrality. That is just nonsense. As the Minister for Defence, I cannot stand over a potential situation where someone in the Kremlin decides whether Irish troops can stay in a peacekeeping mission because he or she refuses to renew a mandate. I do not believe that the Defence Forces should be put in that position.

There are other ways in which we can provide the reassurance that I hope will keep a very large majority in the Dáil comfortable with the basis on which we make decisions to send Irish troops abroad. I am happy to return to the committee in the autumn to go through some of the details on how we might be able to do that better.