Mr. Declan Power:

The Macedonian mission is an example, although I am not saying the Chinese sat down and planned that because of Ireland. What I am saying is that what happened was totally in line with our foreign policy. It was considered quite an important mission for the stability of the region, and particularly for Macedonia. We were not able to take part because of a political row between the Chinese and the Macedonians. If we did not have the triple lock impeding us, we could have stayed as part of that EU-led mission. What happened was wholly in line with our foreign policy and the UN Charter. This is the thing.

I can foresee situations in which the UN Assembly votes for something but the permanent five members of the UN Security Council do nothing about it. Regardless of what has been said in recent times in the media about 1956 when the UN Council managed to authorise a peacekeeping mission, that would not be possible now. While it might pass a resolution, the operational button does not get pressed in UN terms unless the Security Council authorises it.

Rwanda is probably a good example. While there are a whole lot of things one could say about Rwanda, I refer to being able to put together, in quick time, a coalition of some sort that would deploy and save lives there. An even better example might be non-combatant evacuation operations. Depending on the size of such operations, Ireland would be precluded from taking part, even though it might be our citizens in need of evacuation. Why would we shackle ourselves? This is not going to change our foreign policies. To steal a line from Senator Craughwell, I see this issue as a bit of a red herring in many respects. I ask that we consider what we need to do to unshackle ourselves from a policy and an operational point of view in order that we maintain our independence and agility.

To answer the Deputy’s question, examples of such missions include Operation Pontus, Operation Althea, the Macedonian operation and various exercises. This was not the intention behind the triple lock. It was to do with what I argue were overly legalistic interpretations. In the original legislation, namely the Defence (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1960, there was nothing about whether it should be 12 or 50 troops. At least the proposed Bill will properly quantify issues to do with the deployment of troops. The figure of up to 50 troops who could be deployed without having to go through the Oireachtas is appropriate if you want to have an autonomous military entity that is able to quickly get on the ground to rescue people.