The days of Ireland’s military triple lock appear to be drawing to a close. The legal requirement that any significant Irish military deployment overseas must be approved by the United Nations, as well as the government of the day and the Dáil, dates back 65 years, although it only acquired a name and entered popular discourse during the referendums on the Nice and Lisbon treaties.
The triple lock is set to be amended under the terms of draft legislation brought to Cabinet yesterday by the Tánaiste, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence, Simon Harris. The amendments will raise the limit on the number of troops that may be deployed without prior approval from 12 to 50 and remove the requirement for approval of larger deployments by the UN.
The first of these addresses a longstanding criticism that the existing cap on numbers hampers the State’s ability to mount missions to extract Irish citizens who find themselves in dangerous situations overseas.
The second, more contentious change has already been attacked by some Opposition parties, including Sinn Féin, who claim that leaving decisions on military deployments to the government and the Dáil represents an erosion of Ireland’s military neutrality.
The welcome I received from Jennifer Johnston is something I will never forget
Oscars 2026: Will Hamnet with Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley get a best picture nomination?
‘My son is getting married in the summer, and the likelihood is that I’m going to be able to see that’
Is it true that women need more sleep each night than men?
That is an interesting position to take for any party which claims to value national sovereignty. And it fails to address the reality that contemporary geopolitical realities effectively make it impossible for Ireland to play a part in any new peacekeeping operations due to the vetoes held by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Although those vetoes are rarely exercised, the threat of their use is why no new mission in has been sanctioned in the last 10 years.
It is true that the Government needs to do more to inform the public on exactly how it sees policy changing once the amending legislation has been passed. But the Opposition, too, must articulate how Ireland’s defence policy should evolve in the fast-changed circumstances of the 2020s, when old preconceptions about the balance of international power are being upturned.
The escalating crisis within Nato, and the ominous signs that the transatlantic security order which has protected Europe for the last 80 years is coming to an end, mean Ireland is faced with new questions that are profound and pressing.
First and foremost among these is Ireland’s commitment to its own defence within a broader European framework. Debates over new overseas deployments will remain academic for as long as the State fails to achieve the most basic capability to patrol its airspace and its seas. With Europe facing new threats to communications infrastructure and cybersecurity, the cosy assumption that its geographical position renders Ireland immune to such dangers is no longer tenable.
