Dr. Karen Devine:

I thank Senator Gallagher. He asked if the triple lock is fit for purpose and the answer is "Yes". The public concept of neutrality limits the military activity of the State to UN peacekeeping only and that is what the triple lock does. From the point of view of democracy, it absolutely works. I co-authored a paper with Daniel Farrelly on the deployment of the Irish Defence Forces based on parliamentary questions from 1991 to last year. One can see there, under the triple lock, the contribution Irish troops have made to international peace and security and, as I said earlier, that is deeply appreciated by all of the other middle powers and small states in the international system. The majority of states at the UN are small, post-colonial states like Ireland and they need and want Ireland to retain the triple lock and to act through positive neutrality.

In 2017 Ireland was a signatory to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. That is also implicated in the triple lock because if we get rid of the triple lock we are feeding into the EU military ambitions for a military industrial complex, with €800 billion to be spent on armaments. NATO has told its members that they cannot sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is part of the path that the Government wants Ireland to go on but the triple lock is a bulwark and stops that.

When conflicts end, they end with a ceasefire and that ceasefire generally needs to be minded and that is when UN peacekeeping comes in. We are not going to see the end of conflict on this planet. Therefore, we need Irish peacekeepers and UN peacekeepers under a mandate. As Professor Murphy said, the UN is the only global organisation that has the authority to mandate missions. In the aforementioned paper with Daniel Farrelly which I presented last September, I quoted the wife of a deceased member of the Irish Defence Forces who died on UN peacekeeping. She said that he was a UN peacekeeper because he wanted to do some good in the world. Contrast that with a Fine Gael member's recent claim that Irish troops want to do "soldiering". They do not. They want to keep peace and they want to do some good for the world. From the point of view of the Defence Forces, the triple lock is valid and should stay.