Mr. Declan Power:

This is referred to also in my submission.

The UNIFIL mission is up for review at the moment. If the US withdraws its support for or vetoes that mission, it will collapse the mission. To offer a hypothetical just to illustrate the point, if it was the case that a group of EU countries that were already in situdecided to stay - Ireland is a central figure there because of our long-time engagement - we would not be able to continue being involved in a mission like that, even if it was authorised by the EU and in line with the UN Charter, because of the triple lock. There have been other missions as well. There was the 1999 mission to Macedonia. Due to a spat between China and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which recognised Taiwan, that led to China withdrawing its support. Once is enough for us to learn our lesson. There are other examples, such as Operation Sophia and Operation Pontus. The latter was a humanitarian naval mission. We were delayed in getting to deploy on that. There were other missions that were not even considered for being put before the permanent five because of threats of a veto.

We should not abandon the UN or anything like that. Rather, we should attempt to reform from within while recognising the reality that, at the moment, the Security Council is very much frozen. We have an unreliable actor in, regrettably, the United States at the moment as well as two totalitarian states in Russia and China, which are both in a position to stymie us. We need to be very clear and honest about this. We have this national conversation, and that is good, but we are also listened to abroad and there are those who have nefarious intent on the international stage, particularly with regard to what is happening in the Middle East, who would see our stance and use it. Unwittingly, our stance could be used as an instrument to sabotage the precarious levels of peace that exist in the likes of south Lebanon, where we made that peace a thing that exists through the expenditure of Irish blood. We should be mindful of that.