A Fine Gael Bill to end the "triple lock" system preventing Irish peacekeepers taking part in missions such as the one in Macedonia was described as "dangerous and irresponsible". Marie O'Halloran reports.
The Government Chief Whip, Ms Mary Hanafin, said the Bill proposed that "we should cast aside multilateralism and pursue our own actions solely on the basis of our own interpretation of the UN Charter".
Fine Gael did not call for a vote on the legislation taken in Private Members' time and it was rejected. Labour had said it could not support the International Peace Missions Deployment Bill.
Ms Hanafin said the Bill would "communicate a major change in relation to Ireland's support for the UN and its institutions".
It was promoting a form of "unilateralism" at a time when the EU and international community were making the case for greater collective decisionmaking.
The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, had also rejected the Bill, but its proponent, Fine Gael's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Gay Mitchell, said the Minister for Defence was more like the Minister for "the fence".
Mr Mitchell stressed that 27 European countries were represented in Macedonia but Irish peacekeepers were not there because China had used its veto on the UN security council, which stopped it being a UN mandated mission. The "triple lock" requires a full UN mandate as well as agreement from the Government and the Dáil.
He rejected the claim that the Bill would undermine the UN and said it sought to do nothing other than to "uphold the sovereign right of this House" to participate in UN-supported missions.
Mr Mitchell described contributions to the debate as "cringing" and dishonest. He added that Irish peacekeepers were now involved in a far more dangerous mission in Liberia.
Sinn Féin's justice spokesman, Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh rejected the Bill as "anti-neutrality" and said that the UN was the "only legitimate body to control and direct international peacekeeping efforts and to enforce international law".
He said the Fine Gael argument was based on fallacies that were "pathetic and laughable". He asked what would happen if Irish peacekeepers were "siphoned off on Rapid Reaction Forces".
But Mr Mitchell said he would not listen to any member of Sinn Féin talk about neutrality or the Defence Forces, because when they spoke of "the Army they do not mean the Defence Forces".