Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I welcome Ms Maguire and her team and thank them for being here. I also thank Ms Maguire for her comprehensive report.

I will start by saying that the Chair declared that our work here today is extremely important. I respectfully suggest that this is a complete red herring. We have an air force that cannot fly, a Naval Service that can only put one ship to sea, and the entire Defence Forces are falling apart around us. There are 31 recommendations for the Air Corps, dating back to 2021, so we should have invited the Director of the Air Corps, the Secretary General of the Department and the Minister here today to find out who is culpable for allowing the collapse of the Air Corps.

In 2026, Ireland will take the Presidency of the Council of the European Union and any Prime Minister flying into Ireland will not be able to fly into Baldonnel. We spent a €250,000 each on aircraft for sea patrols. They cannot now fly from Baldonnel and must go to Shannon Airport. Today's debate is a complete red herring. It is unlikely we will have troops to send anywhere, and instead we should be discussing bread and butter issues and not this goddamn triple lock. I am indifferent to the triple lock one way or the other. I have always seen it as a nonsense.

With respect to the veto, a number of my colleagues have mentioned the power of the United Nations Security Council versus that of the General Assembly. Has the Department got legal advice with respect to the role and functionality of the Security Council versus what can be done by the General Assembly? Has it sought advice from the United Nations? Do we have a copy of the United Nations peacekeeping and peace enforcement policy? If so, can that copy be made available to the committee? I ask because a lot of really good points have been made here today with respect to the number of troops that can be deployed in the event of the abolition of the triple lock. My colleague Senator Clonan is right. It is not a change; it is the abolition of the triple lock.

My next question is on the triple lock. It may be an unfair question to ask Ms Maguire but she can tell me that in her reply. Is any other professional body in the State of Ireland subject to the same ludicrous rules as the triple lock? For example, can we only send 12 teachers abroad? Should we send no more than 12 politicians abroad on St. Patrick's weekend? Why have the Defence Forces been singled out for this type of treatment? I will discuss the Ward report in the second iteration and that needs to be done.

It was mentioned in the documentation supplied by the Department that there are three criteria for troops to be sent abroad, namely, the evacuation of Irish citizens, military close-protection operations and the deployment of Defence Forces personnel in support of international operations. What about port visits for the Naval Service? What about counter-terrorism operations? Let us say an Aer Lingus or Ryanair jet is hijacked and brought to a country that does not have special forces and is unable to carry out a counter-terrorist operation. Should the Irish Government be asked to deploy special forces to recover that aircraft? Are they going to be able to do that? What about hostage recovery? What about the rescue of EU colleagues' citizens abroad? If we are going to do away with this, the statement needs to be much broader to cover all sorts of eventualities. We are talking about legislation here that will see me into the grave and maybe a number of the younger committee members as well, so we need that legislation to broad.

We are talking about an international force, and we are talking about the proposed defence (amendment) Bill. It would be the type of international force in existence in 1960. Is it not true that in the 1950s there was a UN-mandated operation under Chapter 8? That was in Korea, if I am not mistaken. Ms Maguire said that the United Nations Security Council alone that holds the power to take decisions, which member states are then obliged to implement. I agree wholeheartedly on that point, but I suggest that the statement is incomplete in that a member state is obligated to implement a United Nations Security Council resolution that confirms either a mandate or an authorisation. We are steering away from the word "NATO" when we are talking about authorisation. Several missions have proceeded under the United Nations authorisation that were led by NATO entities. We talk about the EU and all the other nice little things, but we do not talk about NATO. It is a fact that Irish troops have served under NATO command under UN authorisation. The witnesses might deal with that.

A number of colleagues mentioned Ireland's policy on military neutrality. This is bandied about all the time. Do the witnesses agree that neutrality is codified in customary international law that dictates practice over time? Neither in the Hague Convention of 1907 nor anywhere in these conventions is any subdivision of neutrality referred to. A state is either neutral or it is not. I constantly hear the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Members of the Houses refer to Ireland's military neutrality and political neutrality. Where is the legislation? Where is the authority to use these terms? I cannot find in customary international law anything to do with political neutrality or military neutrality. We will be trying to get to the bottom of Ireland's position with respect to neutrality or military non-alignment, and we will be trying to understand why these terms are conflated with the triple lock. We are looking at the triple lock. We are not looking at anything else, but they are all being conflated. We need to do that.

I will hold on that for a few seconds. I have a few seconds left. I apologise to Ms Maguire because there is a lot of stuff there.