Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Ceann Comhairle said in her letter yesterday, it is up to the Members of this House, the democratically elected people of this Dáil, to decide the Standing Orders. It is absolutely in line with democracy after an election for Government and Opposition to put forward amendments and then have a vote on the floor of the Dáil. That is what we intend to do. We are going to do it next week. We are going to respect the outcome of the Dáil reform committee meeting yesterday, have a vote next week and move this place forward in terms of delivering for the people.

On the issue of the triple lock, I genuinely want to engage constructively because we need to get this right. Even though I accept that we do not share a view, I had a good engagement with Deputy Gibney on this issue yesterday. I look forward to more good engagements across the House. I believe that we need to amend the triple lock. We in the previous Government made that clear. We made it clear during the election campaign. We have also made it very clear in the programme for Government.

There have already been a number of times where the veto of the UN Security Council - and people such as Vladimir Putin sit on the council - has stopped Irish people, the men and women of Óglaigh na hÉireann of whom I am so proud, participating. I gave examples yesterday. For example, the possibility of a veto emerged in 2022 in respect of UN authorisation for Operation Althea, the European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina, EUFOR. In 1999, a permanent member of the UN Security Council vetoed the renewal of the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force. As a result, we were unable to participate in the mission in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. More recently, in 2015, the EU established a security mission in the Mediterranean to help refugees. It was know as Operation Sophia. This mission did not have a UN mandate until 2016 and we could not participate. There are organisations that we, and I think the Deputy, passionately believe in, such as the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre on narcotics, an international maritime intelligence centre supported by the EU. It requested a Naval Service ship and Ireland wanted to go. There was political consensus around that but we could not do it because there was no UN mandate.

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