Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:

People simply do not understand the functioning of the United Nations Security Council. The way the Government frames it, it is as though they are sitting around a table deciding whether Ireland should be allowed to deploy, yes or no, when they are actually approving a mandate in general and then, once it is approved, we deploy. As Micheál Martin himself said on the Dáil floor in 2013, that is at the core of our neutrality. If we deploy on a mission that does not have UN mandate support, we are necessarily taking sides in a conflict. The discussion that took place around sending potentially a coalition of the willing that Keir Starmer mentioned into Ukraine is an example. If we were to join that coalition of the willing, that would be an example of Ireland joining a mission that would not-----