Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

lreland’s neutrality with regard to participation in armed conflicts, our position in not joining military alliances and our commitment to the specific ideals of the UN Charter have always allowed us to exercise a significant voice towards building and achieving peace as a resolutely non-aligned nation. I think on all sides of the House, there is agreement that the value of this independent role on the world stage must always be central to our foreign policy, as it underlines our legitimacy as an honest, independent actor for peace whenever we are called upon to participate as a peacekeeping force. The Government now proposes the removal of the triple lock authorisation for foreign military activities, which has a direct implication for that core idea of impartiality in military deployments.

Last week, I asked the Tánaiste if the new policy dispensing with the need for a UN Security Council mandate will make a distinction between peacekeeping missions and peace-enforcement missions. The response was unclear, and I would welcome further clarity today. To us in the Green Party, this is a critical distinction and, if our peace deployments are to become unmoored from Security Council authorisation, an important visible principle in preserving Ireland's reputation as a neutral, honest actor, would be lost.

Peacekeeping in general has been the deployment of the minimal multilateral force necessary, with the agreement of all sides to a dispute, with a mandate to provide a security presence to protect civilian life, to prevent conflict from escalating further and to create space to build the peace through humanitarian aid and peace-building programmes. Peace enforcement is the deployment of a force without the specific consent of the parties to a conflict, which uses a coercive military force to impose a cessation in fighting between two or more parties.

If the State is to preserve that crucial neutral and trusted role, built up over decades, and move beyond what is often a paralysed UN Security Council, we must enunciate a visible, principled alternative as a State. We should state clearly that we will not act outside a UN Security Council mandate when participating in peace-enforcement missions which require proactive military engagements, offensively imposing order. Were Ireland to deploy in enforcement missions without Security Council consent, the risks of being seen by one or more parties as partisan are clear. So too, are the risks that Ireland contributes to force led by states that ultimately act in their own interests, rather than in strict adherence to the principles of the UN Charter. I would very much like to hear the Minister of State's response, as the distinction between peacekeeping and peace-enforcement is critical to this debate.

See this speech in context