Mr. Joe Noonan:

That is the core question. It was of its time. At the time, it was known it had in-built imperfections. The current debate gets two different things tangled up. It would be maybe helpful to ask the committee to disentangle the two things. The two things are what we have at the moment, with all its imperfections plain with, as it is accurately said, the idea that Russia, China, the US, Britain and France can veto the mandate, which seems bizarre now. That is one thing.

The other thing is the bigger question in a way of how Ireland makes decisions about and sets guardrails around the deployment of members of the Permanent Defence Force. It may be helpful to separate those two things. If someone comes to the view that the first arrangement from 1960 is no longer suitable, that is fine, and it is a perfectly respectable position to hold.

However, that does not predetermine the decision as to how to respond to that. It seems to me this Bill has in it a core belief that that day is over and so we will get rid of it. I look for safeguards in the Bill and candidly, beyond what I will call soft language, which is not reliable, I do not find any guardrails. For example, we shudder involuntarily when we think about what is happening in Gaza. Every one of us in this room does. That is fine by the European Union. The European Union has decided to stay hands-off and that Israel can do what it likes. That is the European Union of our common values, expressed repeatedly in solemn documents signed by people with fine titles. When it comes to Gaza, it does not want to know. How do we, as a small country, learn from that posture of a large assembly, dominated by big countries with very different histories from ours?