The Irish Times view on the Triple Lock: proposed change does not threaten neutrality

Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin’s announcement that the Government will scrap the UN veto on Irish deployment of troops abroad is a welcome commitment to removing an anomalous provision in our law that may jeopardise the country’s proud contribution to international peacekeeping. It does not represent a threat in any way to Ireland’s neutrality.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar yesterday insisted that removing what is known as the Triple Lock would be a vindication of Irish sovereignty and that “we … aren’t going to allow Russia or China or America or Britain or France decide where we can or can’t send our troops”.

Under the Triple Lock system, 12 or more Defence Forces troops cannot be deployed on an active overseas mission without approval from the Dáil, the Government and, crucially in this context, authorisation from the UN Security Council. It is only the latter constraint which the Government proposes to remove.

Any change in national security posture inevitably, however, leads to allegations that the policy objective of neutrality is being threatened. Yet the conflation of the idea of the Triple Lock with any of the many contested definitions of Irish neutrality is deeply illogical. The traditional rationale of the Triple Lock has been to create an obstacle to make any abandonment of neutrality more difficult. However, its very nature undermines one of the central tenets of the this neutrality.

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Speaking in the Dáil in 2005 in defence of Ireland’ s right to allow Shannon to be used by US military flights, then Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen argued: “The core of our neutrality…. lies in independence of judgment in being able to make up our own minds about what is right for Ireland.” Neutrality, by any but the most minimalist definition, is more than that, but it is at least that – an expression of national sovereignty.

The Triple Lock is an express denial of the sovereign right of the Government and the Dáil to make the ultimate decision about deploying Irish troops abroad. That decision now lies in the hands of the dysfunctional Security Council and individual veto-wielding members like Russia, China, the US and the UK. The Security Council has not authorised a new peacekeeping mission since 2014 and the political gridlock in the council is such that it has yet even to issue a statement on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A reformed Security Council which genuinely reflected both world opinion and the UN’s founding imperative of peace-building through collective security would perhaps indeed be the place to legitimise and authorise Ireland’s peace missions abroad. It is a far cry from such a body today, and Ireland should in the interim reassert its own sovereignty.