Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

We have consulted our mission to the UN in New York and taken advice from them. We are trying to have an all-embracing definition so that if the United Nations words a resolution in a certain way, our defence legislation corresponds with it. If the mission is desirable we should not be prevented by a technicality from the definition in the defence legislation not being exhaustive enough to cover what the United Nations might state.

We are saying that we will send troops on an overseas peace mission at the behest of the United Nations, if we decide for other reasons that the mission is desirable. We are not saying that if we think a mission should be engaged in, and the United Nations asks us to join it, we will join it only if asked in a certain way, with the State being constrained by the Defence Act.

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