Mr. Declan Power:

That is a pretty straightforward question. In my experience, it is not that other countries are continually talking about it. Sometimes, there is a genuine surprise in certain circles when it is realised that an Irish deployment is completely reliant on a UN Security Council resolution going through. It is not that other countries want to deviate from that. If there is going to be a Security Council resolution, most countries prefer for that to be passed. However, they are not dependent on it. They can start to get ready and deploy. They can move assets into place, whereas we cannot. That is when it pops up. I am probably talking more at the operational level. There is a bit of head scratching in those scenarios. For example, if the Irish were in favour of sending a ship to take part in Operation Pontus, other countries would question the delay or ask when they can expect staff officers to be deployed to start co-ordinating the operation. It is in that scenario that it is realised that Ireland must wait for the resolution to go through.

My key point is that this makes us an outlier. I do not know of any other state in the European Union, including some of the traditional neutral states, such as Austria and Switzerland, or former neutral states, such as Sweden and Finland, that have this impediment. It was never intended to be that. Times change and we have to adapt.

Being a reliable partner is important. That will become apparent going forward. While no one can predict the future, the UN Security Council is very much frozen right now. It is becoming a political instrument of the big powers, particularly the totalitarians. No one knows what is going to happen with it. If we want to stay involved in making the contributions that we have, it is probably going to have to be through regional security organisations, the EU being the most obvious and appropriate one.

The operation in Chad was successful. That was a peace-enforcement mission at the start. It then became a direct UN-led mission. The Irish stayed throughout. We started off wearing EU insignia and finished wearing UN insignia. I would like to see us have that kind of agility. At the moment, we cannot say we have that. We can be an unwitting cat’s paw for other countries that want to use our triple lock legislation to maybe interrupt or stymie a mission.