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

Section 1 of the Defence (Amendment) Act 2006 clearly refers, in the context of the triple lock, to "an international force or body established, mandated, authorised, endorsed, supported, approved or otherwise sanctioned by a resolution of the Security Council or the General Assembly of the United Nations". It is simply not true that we have any veto. A regional peacekeeping force that was endorsed by a resolution of the General Assembly of the UN would meet the requirements for the triple lock. It is simply misinformation.

The report attempts to endorse another project that was also the source of misinformation, namely, the sending of 30 troops to participate in the EU military assistance mission, which, in my opinion, was a breach of neutrality. At the time, the Tánaiste was at pains to emphasise this would be non-lethal training. People were led to believe this was training to deal with mines. In fact, it emerged lethal training was involved, in the shooting of rifles.

There are more and more of these PESCO projects to which we are asked to sign up with so little oversight or debate in here. I will quote from one of those we are being asked to sign up to today, relating to the network of logistics hubs in Europe and support operations. It states:

With respect to possible operations, for the predeployment of [war] materiel, depots and or maintenance facilities of other European countries could be used mutually as well. The network will decrease the reaction time and increase capacities and sustainability for military operations.

This project is co-ordinated by Germany, the second biggest exporter of weapons in the world, after only the US, to Israel, which is currently engaged in a genocide. If we look at the two EDA projects we are asked to sign up for, one of them is a cyber defence thing. Again, if we read about the previous cyber defence thing, it is explicitly very military orientated, involving a drone control system, a space control system, to be defended from attacks. This is all a process of militarisation and we are opposed to it.

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