Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I preface my question by clearly stating that Sinn Féin believes the UN should and must develop urgently the capacity for genocide prevention. There cannot be a higher priority for the international community to address as a whole.

The Minister referred to the UN Secretary General. On Thursday, the Secretary General will pitch Irish involvement in the new EU rapid deployment battle groups and inform us that he welcomes the outsourcing of UN peacekeeping operations to the EU. The justification for this from his point of view is the urgent need to develop genocide prevention capacity. Does the Minister accept it is no accident the UN's peacekeeping capacity is so weak and that the reason for this is that for decades it has been systematically starved of resources? The EU, which is in a position to change this, has selfishly focused on developing its own capacity and military alliance.

The Brahimi report on peacekeeping operations found that this development has been a significant contribution to the UN's current difficulties. Does the Minister accept that policies such as those of the Department of Defence of failing to prioritise and adequately resource UN-led missions first and foremost is contributing to the erosion of the UN's in-house peacekeeping capacity? Does he accept that we have a responsibility to earmark Defence Forces personnel for UN-led operations to strengthen the capacity lost to regional military alliances, as is happening at present? How can he ignore the significant finding of the Brahimi report on this and that Government policy is contributing to the undermining of the UN system by threatening it with redundancy? Why is the Government, which in the past professed UN primacy as a central tenet of our foreign policy, contributing to the problem rather than seeking to find a solution?

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