Professor Ray Murphy:

I thank the Senator for those questions. I will take them backwards to some extent. Regional organisations have the right and the authority within those regions to establish peacekeeping forces once they have the consent of the neighbouring state where they are going to deploy their forces. They do not technically need UN approval. However - and this is really important and relevant to Ireland - if they are proposing to do peace enforcement, which as the Senator said and I pointed out in my submission, is something quite different from traditional peacekeeping and involves the right to use force against parties to the conflict, then a Security Council mandate is needed to give that legitimacy and make it legal under international law. The legislation refers to the fact the UN Charter recognises in chapter VIII regional organisations and their capacity to do peacekeeping. The UN is quite happy in many instances when regional organisations take that responsibility but the UN wants to have a role and that role is the provision of a mandate. However, it seems to suggest, though I do not think deliberately, that what is being proposed in the legislation is already permissible, but it is not. This legislation is open-ended. It is going to permit Ireland to participate in peacekeeping in the more traditional sense, peace enforcement and other types of potential combat operations and coalitions of the willing without any UN mandate. That is clearly not permissible in terms of the UN Charter and therefore it is quite a dangerous potential precedent to set. That is one of my most serious reservations when we are doing just a black letter analysis of what the legislation proposed.

The Senator is right the legislation refers to "peace-keeping, conflict prevention". Conflict prevention is a noble aspiration, but what exactly does that entail? If forces are deployed to Ukraine now in the event of what I am not even going to call a "ceasefire" because the more common term nowadays is "cessation of hostilities", what role does that specifically imply they will do and if the parties to conflict do not co-operate, to what extent do Irish forces along with whatever other nationalities they are working with use force to ensure the mandate is carried out? We do not know. The legislation does not know, and it is open-ended. It is likewise with "strengthening international security". There is no legal definition of that and could not be, but that essentially could be anything, anywhere and by anybody and that is very dangerous, permissive legislation and therefore I oppose it.