I want to discuss the fast-moving geopolitical environment we inhabit at the moment. As we speak, the US is deploying approximately 8,000 ground troops to the Persian Gulf. Included are the 1st Marine expeditionary force and the 82nd airborne division. This presages a ground intervention against a population with 91 million citizens. It is part of a growing strategic doctrine in the US on what is referred to as the “axis of disruption” of CRINK, namely, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. These countries have now been identified formally by the US as a threat and an enemy with which they will compete for resources, including water, energy and fossil fuels, in the coming century. It is in this turbulent and destabilised environment that the US and her allies are pushing very hard against the international rules-based order. They are pushing against the UN and have set up the Board of Peace. They are abandoning the international laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions. This war is illegal, however reprehensible we find the Iranian regime. I personally find it repulsive but I lament the tearing up of the world order.

It is precisely at this moment that the Irish Government wants to remove the triple lock and abandon or walk back from the principle of a UN Security Council mandate. In our lifetime, there will be no peacekeeping if this is done. It will be all about peace enforcement, coalitions of the willing, interventions and stabilisation forces. If our troops are not wearing a blue helmet, in what capacity will they be participating in these missions? They will be war fighting. I ask my colleagues, particularly those in Fianna Fáil, because I know they are uneasy about this, to have a referendum on our constitutional neutrality. We must put a protection in place. In the absence of the triple lock, we are being asked to trust a community of decision-makers who have made mistake after mistake. By getting rid of the triple lock now, the Government is setting its face against the people. It is a question of judgment similar to that when choosing a presidential candidate. The Government is making a big mistake.