Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

I will put my position on the table. This conversation around the triple lock is a red herring and a waste of time within this Oireachtas at the moment. I know of nobody who is interested in it outside of this House. If it was put on a survey it would come in somewhere around 50th or 55th of the areas of priority for the public. Perhaps we should introduce a triple lock for Ministers going abroad on Saint Patrick's Day and restrict that to numbers. It is a ridiculous piece to come before this House but we are stuck with it and we have to deal with it. My only reason for removing the triple lock is there are areas which are currently limited by it, namely, counter-narcotic operations, protection of embassy operations and evacuation operations. For example, if a Ryanair plane is hijacked in a country that does not have special forces and a request is sent to Ireland to send out special forces to relieve the aircraft, we may find ourselves unable to do that because of the triple lock. It is my view that we are a sovereign State. There are two Houses of the Oireachtas. There is a Government. It should be possible to write legislation that would force the Government to have a significant majority. I appreciate what Professor Maguire said about a whipped Government always winning a vote. We saw that in the last 24 hours. They can win any vote they want to, at the end of the day. Professor Murphy has served overseas. I have served in the military. I know of nobody who says Ireland is great because they are neutral. We serve with the Polish, the Finnish, with all sorts of people overseas. My key question is, while keeping the triple lock, how do we mount counter-narcotic operations, evacuation operations, and protection of embassies abroad? My final point, which I have written a paper on that is available on my LinkedIn site, regards the protection of the Atlantic resources. The point is the Atlantic resources are European resources and with one ship we can hardly protect them. We certainly cannot protect anything up there.