Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On military advice, I was asked to withdraw troops from the Golan Heights in the interests of consolidation, an issue we will deal with on a later question. We are participating in the EU battlegroup, as we have been doing for 20 years.

To give another example, a subsequent EU peacekeeping operation in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia did not have a Security Council mandate and Ireland was unable to participate in that mission. More recently, in 2015, the European Union established a security mission in the Mediterranean Sea known as Operation Sophia. That mission did not have a UN mandate until 2016 and Ireland could not consider contributing to it until that mandate was in place. In 2017, the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre Narcotics, an international maritime intelligence centre supported by the EU, requested a Naval Service ship to assist with maritime drug interdiction operations. Although we are a strong supporter of the centre and were, in fact, one of the founding members, a ship could not be sent given there would be no UN mandate for such an operation.

Those are the kinds of examples we could be excluded from. There could very well be a mission if there were an effective Middle Eastern peace plan, such as through the Arab peace initiative-----

See this speech in context