Sarah O'Reilly (Aontú) | Oireachtas source

At 6 o'clock this evening, Aontú will hold a protest outside the Dáil to call on the Government to keep the triple lock. Roger Cole is a long-standing advocate for peace and is the founder and chairman of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance. He will be the guest speaker tonight. At a time when there is violent conflict across the Middle East, an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and atrocities being carried out in Gaza, it seems that now more than ever we should be trying to foster peace and de-escalation.

The Government is campaigning to remove the triple lock on the basis that it dilutes our autonomy when it comes to deploying Irish troops on peacekeeping missions. While many would acknowledge flaws within the UN system, it is a total affront to the long-standing mechanisms of peacekeeping to act as though our sovereignty is being eroded. Was our sovereignty under threat when Micheál Martin, now Taoiseach, stood in the Dáil Chamber in 2013 and stated that the triple lock is "at the core of our neutrality"? In fact, he commented on the idea of Russia and China vetoing our peacekeeping missions as "nothing more than an out-of-touch ideological obsession on the part of Fine Gael".

Ruth Ní Bhriain wrote an excellent paper that I recommend Government members read because it would dispel the confusion and misinformation they are propagating. She correctly wrote that it is an incredible stretch to frame UN procedures as a threat to Irish sovereignty. We cannot discredit and disregard the international structures that have governed global peace and security for decades and conclude that Ireland should suddenly abandon legislative commitments to them. There is zero public appetite to erode our neutrality. By aligning ourselves with one military bloc or another, including the EU, we are compromising the position of the Irish people.

I encourage everyone to attend the protest this evening. We need a cross-party approach to this. We cannot allow the Government to attack our neutrality at a time when there is an increasing appetite for warmongering throughout Europe.