Tom Clonan (Independent)

It is the sum of all fears as the parent of an 18-year-old, a 21-year-old, a 23-year old and a 24-year-old. Your heart is in your mouth when they go out and you just want them to come home. My heart and my deepest sympathies go out to the families and friends in the communities who have lost those five beautiful young people. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha dílse.

I want to raise again the issue of the triple lock. The Cathaoirleach and I have sat on the defence and national security committee and have heard expert after so-called expert tell us that there will be no more Security Council resolutions. Lo and behold, we have one for an international stability force in Gaza, to be headed up by no less a personage than President Trump, with Tony Blair as his second-in-command. As I correctly predicted on that committee over and over again, the days of peacekeeping are over. That term should not be used by Ministers in our Cabinet to describe the activities and the potential future activities of Irish soldiers in any mandated or non-mandated mission going forward. The stability force that is proposed will most likely be dominated by Sunni troops, probably from the Turkish military or the Gulf states, and it will be a fighting force. Hamas has already declared that it will not accept it. That is the future of our foreign deployments. Notwithstanding the merits or demerits of that UN Security Council resolution, by what international authority will we send our troops overseas in the absence of a triple lock? Will we accept a decision from Brussels, from the EU military staff, from NATO? By what international authority? If we do that, it will have no legal standing. It will be de facto an invasion or occupying force. I say especially to our Fianna Fáil colleagues that they need to ask questions of their Minister. He has been publishing statements on digital platforms that show that he is clearly out of his depth, making factually inaccurate observations about the EU's involvement in international conflict.We really need to have a serious debate here in this House because the Government is setting its face against the Irish people. It is a serious error of judgment to go ahead and abolish the triple lock. We should instead invest in our defences and our sovereign neutral status. We cannot even defend ourselves during the Presidency of the European Union. We need to have a proper debate. Forget about this triple lock nonsense and just invest in our neutrality and invest in our defences.