Gabh mo leithscéal, tá tinneas sa scornach agam agus tá mo ghuth lag. I will read from Fianna Fáil's manifesto in 2020 to the electorate in order to sit where they are sitting now.

All of its members signed up to this. Ireland will, "Fully maintain neutrality and the Triple Lock ... Fianna Fáil reaffirms its commitment to the retention of the triple lock of UN mandate or authorisation, Government and Dáil approval, prior to committing Defence Forces personnel on overseas service". It concludes: "We will fully maintain neutrality and the triple lock mechanism." Within the programme for Government that was then entered into, I assume with the insistence of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, states with regard to overseas operations and international co-operation the Government will "ensure that all overseas operations will be conducted in line with our position of military neutrality and will be subject to a triple lock of UN, Government and Dáil Éireann approval". Now the Government wants to change that.

The Tánaiste should talk to us a bit about the Bill the Government will bring before the House soon but he also needs to explain to people what exactly it is the Government wants to do that it cannot already do with our Defence Forces inside the triple lock. Does the Government want to operate outside the UN Charter? It would appear this is exactly what the Government wants to do when the Tánaiste talks about needing to free our foreign policy from a commitment that insists the UN must pass a motion to allow us do that. The Tánaiste has said in the House previously and he will say the same thing again that Ireland will not be hamstrung by Russia, China or the UK, or for that matter the USA. However, we need to know if this is the case, where does he want to send Irish troops that he cannot send them under the direction of the UN Charter? Where does the Tánaiste actually want to send them?

Is it the case that the Government is falling in line with others across Europe who are giving us worrying signs that the war clouds are gathering? The Polish Prime Minister, Mr. Donald Tusk, has claimed that we are in a pre-war era. Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO's military committee, said: "We are preparing for war with Russia." The President of France, Mr. Emmanuel Macron believes that NATO should be sending troops into Ukraine. Will the Tánaiste please clarify for the public if he wants the sons and daughters of Irish - mostly working-class - people to be sent out to fight wars on behalf of the new colonial powers that are dominating the world now? For what exactly does the Government need to lift the triple lock? The Tánaiste should not tell me it is to pick up people who are stranded in Kabul or Somalia and cannot get out. That is not the case. When has the UN ever stopped Ireland being able to rescue its own citizens?

I was 12 years of age when the referendum to join the European Union was passed overwhelmingly by the Irish people. What was interesting about that debate and every other debate about the European Union since then and every other referendum is that people from the Deputy's side of the House predicted conscription-----

We did not predict conscription.

-----membership of NATO, NATO tanks on O'Connell Street-----

We fought it.

We did not.

No. We fought it.

That has been a consistent line adopted and I have heard it-----

No.

That is not true.

I did not interrupt the Deputies-----

That is not true. You are telling lies.

No, I am not.

Yes, you are-----

Deputies-----

We did not predict troops on O'Connell Street.

No interruptions please or the Deputy will be out of order.

We did not predict conscription. That is a lie.

Deputy Murphy will be out of order. Let the Tánaiste respond.

The old trope of conscription-----

That is your trope.

-----and of joining a European army has been in every referendum.

I did not mention "conscription"-----

The Deputy just asked if I was going to send Irish troops out to fight in colonial wars-----

I asked where the Tánaiste would want to send them. Where does the Government want to send them after they lift the triple lock?

I did not interrupt. I am entitled, through the Chair, to argue and make points to the House and to answer the questions the Deputy has raised. My point is a valid point and I will not be browbeaten by the Deputy just as she tried to browbeat me last year when I had a consultative forum, which is a basic act of participative democracy. She tried everything to denigrate the chair and tried everything to stop debate because she do not even think we have the right to discuss these issues-----

The Tánaiste cancelled the citizen's assembly.

-----and we can only discuss them on her terms. That is the only basis on which she thinks we can discuss issues of neutrality and the triple lock. I believe in military neutrality and we are militarily neutral. The triple lock has nothing to do with military neutrality-----

That is not true.

-----but it has everything to do with the incapacity and the paralysis on the Security Council around peacekeeping missions. We have a proud peacekeeping record in this country. We are in UNIFIL in Lebanon. There are examples where we were not in a position to help. In 1999, a permanent member of UN Security Council vetoed the renewal of the United Nations preventive deployment force and as the subsequent EU peace operation in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia did not have a Security Council mandate, Ireland was also unable to participate in that mission.

More recently in 2015, the EU established a security mission in the Mediterranean Sea known as Operation Sophia. This mission did not have a UN mandate until 2016 and Ireland could not consider contributing to this mission until after the mandate was in place. In 2017, the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (Narcotics), which is an international maritime intelligence centre supported by the European Union, requested a Naval Service ship to assist with maritime drug interdiction operations. Although Ireland is a strong supporter of the centre and was in fact one of the founding members, a ship could not be sent given that there would be no UN mandate for such an operation. So there are examples. There has not been a UN peacekeeping mission mandated by the Security Council since 2014. Despite the misleading assertions by Deputy Smith, we are basically proposing the removal of the UN Security Council sanction but we have made it crystal clear that anything we do will be within the UN Charter.

It does not make sense.

Deputy Smith knows that I said that time and again yet it is disappointing that she deliberately distorts the truth with her assertions. Anything we do, including the legislative proposals we will bring forward, will be absolutely within the framework of the UN Charter. That has always been our esprit de corps as a country.

Deputy Murphy is correct. It does not make any sense. It is totally illogical to say that we will operate within the UN Charter and, at the same time, we want to break free of the UN Security Council. They are part and parcel of the same package.

The Tánaiste has gone back to when he was aged 12 and how he remembers the campaign and how we threatened that there was going to be troops on the street and conscription. I am probably a bit older than the Tánaiste but I certainly would not have been talking about conscription. The Tánaiste has a great memory. In 2013 - when he was not 12 - he was on the opposition benches and he said the triple lock was at "the core of our neutrality" and he explicitly rejected the argument that it gives the veto to Russia or China over our peacekeeping activities. Now the Tánaiste is saying the opposite and what he really means is that everything changed with the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Putin, we are now facing a new, splintered new-style colonial world where wars are on the brink, we want to be able to engage with other countries and possibly with NATO eventually, but definitely with the European Union which has the Government's ear all the time, and we want to engage in military activity with them. I want the Tánaiste to tell us where he wants to send troops. Will it be the sons and daughters of Irish working-class people who will be sent abroad to lose their lives? I do not believe it will be the sons and daughters of the people on the benches opposite me. The Tánaiste needs to tell the people that. He could make this a general election issue. If the Government does not want to have a referendum on neutrality, it should at least wait until the general election and change the Fianna Fáil manifesto from what it gave to people in 2020 to one that says, "I want to get rid of the triple lock and I do not believe in our neutrality."

That is a monstrous lie and assertion to suggest that removing the triple lock will facilitate, will be a factor in, or result in young Irish people fighting in wars. The European Union is not a colonial power. This exactly proves my point. The Deputy is denying past campaigns and she has just reiterated the entire campaign-----

I would describe it as a colonial power.

It is not a colonial power. It has no colonies. It is not Russia. The real imperialism of today is Russia.

It has a colony called "Israel".

The Deputy just does pro forma. She will articulate a formulation in this Chamber.

The Tánaiste does not answer the questions.

I have never seen the Deputy march on behalf of the people of Ukraine and she never will----

The Tánaiste is wrong about that. He doesn't answer the questions.

-----because she has presented the Ukraine war and Russia's invasion as somehow a western European neocolonial project.

No, we did not. The Tánaiste has not answered the question-----

She has always attempted to do that

Where does the Tánaiste want to send troops?

It is a false dichotomy between the colonialism of the past and the sovereignty we have achieved as members of the Europe Union, which has always respected-----

I have caught the Tánaiste contradicting himself so many times. He will not answer the questions.

I will answer the question. As I have said, it will be completely within the UN Charter. We only want to be involved in peacekeeping missions. We will have to be involved in evacuating Irish citizens and we need to change the frame-----

Do not give me that.

Do not give the Deputy that. Do not give the Deputy that about Afghanistan. What about the people in Afghanistan who were rescued when the Army rangers were participants? What about Sudan?

And we did it. Did we not do that?

The Deputies are so dismissive of the reality of what is happening in many parts of this world.

We had to get Irish citizens out of Sudan and Afghanistan and that is going to increase. Unfortunately, there will be more war situations so we will have evacuation-----

So the Tánaiste acknowledges that there are going to be more war situations but he wants to be free to send troops to those wars.

No - to evacuate Irish citizens safely.