The “only alternative” that opponents of the plan to end the so-called triple lock on Irish troop deployments offer is to “do nothing and stand by as Russia and others continue to destroy international peacekeeping”, Micheál Martin has said.
Opponents of the Government’s plans to end a United Nations Security Council veto on foreign deployment of Irish soldiers are guilty of “demagoguery”, the Taoiseach said at the opening of the West Cork History Festival in Inishbeg, near Baltimore, Co Cork.
The Government’s Defence (Amendment) Bill 2026 would scrap the need to get the approval of the UN Security Council before more than 12 soldiers could be sent abroad, requiring only the approval of the Dáil and the Government instead.
“Reforming the broken triple-lock mechanism for authorising peacekeeping operations has already been subject to wide misrepresentations and demagoguery,” Martin said.
The debate on the future of the decades-old triple lock has been surrounded by “a lot of heat and very little light”, Martin said, where those wanting the triple lock to stay have “got worse” as they “aggressively denounce” those who do.
One of the values that is held most dearly by the Irish public for decades is they “believe in directly supporting efforts to protect peace in the most difficult places in the world”.
“Yet in reality, the model of peacekeeping which we supported over the last 60 years is likely to disappear unless we are willing to evolve our policies,” he said.
“Without the practical ability to participate in peacekeeping, our neutrality would be exposed as actually involving nothing more than turning our back on the values of supporting peace and human rights, which should define our approach.”
Strongly criticising Russia, Martin said that “the very core of Russian aggression against its neighbours and the wider world is a historical revanchism which will not allow any dissent from the idea of a noble and pure Russian history”.
“In those parts of Ukraine which they have so brutally occupied over the last 12 years, you can no longer talk, read or learn about the mass starvation of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet regime in Moscow,” he said.
“You cannot learn about the unique Tartar culture of Crimea or the separate religious and cultural histories of the region. Within Russia itself, the archives have been closed for over two decades.”
Backing the enlargement of the EU, he said “anti-European Union movements obsessively attack the union; its core success in stopping the historic destructive cycle of conflict between member states is undeniable”.
“A decade ago, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote and the rise of populism, newspapers and journals alike were full of stories based on the idea that Europe was over as an idea,” he said.
More states want to join because “people far more readily understand that it is the very strength of the idea of Europe that leads to the often fevered attacks and attempts to undermine it”.