Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I know the Senator is aware of how peacekeeping missions actually work but it is important to put on the record that, first, we do not decide on the mandate of UN missions. The UN decides on it. We influence that through the UN process. In fact, we have been very successful at influencing a slight change in the mandate of our largest mission, that is, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, over the summer months to allow UNIFIL to be more proactive in assisting the Lebanese armed forces, which are under enormous financial pressure at the moment because of the condition of Lebanon as a country in terms of financial strain and so forth whereby basic salaries are not being paid. That is, therefore, a good example of Ireland trying to influence a mandate for a mission that has been in place for a very long time. Ultimately, however, what a UN-mandated mission actually does is decided in New York at UN headquarters.

A force commander is then chosen and sometimes we have had Irish force commanders in UNIFIL, the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, UNDAF, and others. The job of that force commander then is to implement the UN-mandated mission. In the context of UNIFIL, many countries and thousands of troops are involved. The idea that there would not be some delegation to a force commander to ensure that he or she can make practical decisions to make sure there is interoperability between different troop-contributing countries in the context of the implementation of a UN mandate to my mind is-----