Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade
Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (Supplementary)
2:00 am
Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South-Central, Sinn Fein)
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To be fair to the Minister of State, I do not think he includes the in-country Ukrainian support. Some Government representatives occasionally do. That cannot be charged against the Minister of State.
I have two other areas I wish to touch on. With the time I have left, I ask the Minister of State to give a response. The first is in reference to the UN peacekeeping missions. We will continue to have debates on the triple lock. I am firm in my view that it is a reliable basis for ensuring that our peacekeepers are deployed in internationally recognised and reliable missions. In any event, unfortunately UNIFIL is being wound down. That means a gap. It is an important element of our Defence Forces' development. This straddles between the two Departments under the Minister, which are connected. From a foreign affairs point of view, there is a degree of negotiation and discussion that happens in relation to UN peacekeeping missions. Does the Minister of State have a sense of whether there is an opening for Irish troops to be deployed to other peacekeeping missions at this moment in time that they are not currently deployed to?
The second area is that the Minister of State touched on the situation in the Middle East. He made the point about it being a fragile moment. It is a fragile moment but in several respects. It is a fragile moment as well because as eyes perhaps move away from the Middle East, the concern is that settlements continue to develop, the ground on which a two-state solution can land narrows and the ability of the Palestinian people to have their own independent state that is fully sovereign becomes more challenging. That is the context of the occupied territories Bill. Pressure must be kept on to ensure compliance with international law in every respect. We were told that the Attorney General's advice on that was nearly ready. That was several months ago. Is there an update as to when the Attorney General's advice will be available to us?