Professor John Maguire:

I will formally thank the committee for the invitation to present at the end of my statement. I have it down to three minutes and will try to get through it, if that is acceptable.

Dismantling the triple lock would further unhinge Irish defence policy from Article 29's positive provisions, from our obligations under the UN Charter and from the people's commitment to UN-directed peacekeeping. I will draw on the words of our Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire, first signatory of the Downpatrick Declaration; Erskine Childers III, who was consulted but then ignored by official Ireland; Louie Bennett, with her warnings about militarism at the inception of our State; former Irish ambassador to Russia Philip McDonagh's plea for democracy; Lelia Doolan's electrifying intervention as "a specialist in being an Irish citizen" at a session of the Consultative Forum on International Security Policy in Galway; and former Commandant Edward Horgan's superb recent interview.

I focus on the perception that access to foreign investment and the EEC-EU required furtive military undertakings. We did not formally join NATO but our informal co-optation with the EU-NATO strategic partnership forged links of power concealed from public scrutiny. The deep consensus under Frank Aiken on decolonisation, nuclear disarmament and UN-directed peacekeeping has been taken for granted and almost hollowed out. A celestial military neutrality has camouflaged developments, bringing us to the threshold of hell on earth. It is a case of "people talking without speaking".

Is war the answer or the problem? Where has it been shown to work? The military policies proposed would in one sense be well funded, but are they well founded? If so, why was the groundwork laid down so furtively? Neither the Commission report nor the watered-down security forum answers those crucial questions. We are doing our job as Irish citizens as well as possible in our response to the forum and the excellent neutrality roadshow. Will the current deliberations reflect Bunreacht na hÉireann's careful post-imperial articulation of voice, authority and power? Sa bhliain 1996, dúirt Dick Spring le muintir na hÉireann, "gur leo féin a bhaineann polasaí eachtrach na hÉireann". An fíor fós an méid sin? Does Irish foreign policy still belong to the Irish people? Can the solemn guarantees given with the second referendums on the Nice and Lisbon treaties now be shredded?

The US poet Walt Whitman asks: "What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain’d by decorum"?

"Our world is becoming unhinged", the UN Secretary General tells us, and "we seem incapable of coming together to respond". Are we hearing without listening? Will his words, like silent raindrops, teardrops, echo in the deadly well of silence?

In 2022, An Taoiseach said:

We have – in this General Assembly, and in the other bodies, institutions and agencies that make up the United Nations – the spaces to discuss, to negotiate, to share experiences, to craft solutions.

Let us reclaim them and use them.