Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The Government decided that this was its moment to try to get rid of military neutrality. What happened then, and the reason the Government ditched the proposal for a citizens' assembly, was that it ran into the roadblock of public opinion. Public opinion, despite all of the attempts to massage it and to say that we need to have a mature debate and so on, remained steadfastly in favour of neutrality. The Government could not shift it. The Government did not change its attitude, though, which is a long-standing attitude in Fine Gael in particular. This is an attitude that the Tánaiste previously described as the long-standing ideological "obsession" of Fine Gael to get rid of the triple lock. We can go back 20 years to its policy document, "Beyond Neutrality". The Government did not its plan but it changed its presentation of the plan. Now, no longer would the Government try to get rid of neutrality. Instead, it would simply try to redefine what neutrality means and, as part of that, tear up the triple lock and that is what is reflected in the Tánaiste's speech today. How the Government defines neutrality today is simply that "Ireland does not participate in military alliances or common or mutual defence arrangements".

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