There is a lot of emotive debate over this issue. The Irish people have consistently spoken out in terms of wanting to preserve our neutrality. In terms of Ukraine, for example, we have been keen to emphasise we are militarily neutral. As my Labour Party colleagues mentioned earlier, what we do not have is the military capacity to defend ourselves in any way, shape or form, or to patrol our coastlines. I note the Government is talking about investing in remote control-type of weaponry. We should be paying our Defence Forces more. They do a great job, and we should be trying to get more personnel on board. As a neutral country - and I wholeheartedly support Ireland's neutrality policy - we should have the capabilities to at least create a strong deterrent. Equally, from a geopolitical perspective, there is a huge risk from the likes of Russia in our economic zone in terms of undersea cables. The UN Security Council is not fit for purpose. I agree with the Government about that. I also note that the defence (amendment) Bill will require that any overseas operations would still be grounded in the principles of the UN Charter and international humanitarian law, even without a formal UN resolution. However, we cannot just have a double lock. We still need a triple lock. If the Government gets rid of the UN Security Council element because it is not fit for purpose, we will need an 80% Dáil resolution and-or the ability to hold a referendum in some situations. There is scope for having up to 60 military personnel without any kind of requirement to go to the Dáil, but for larger scale operations we need a triple lock of sorts and it should be an 80% Dáil majority, a referendum or both.

Sentiment score: 0.21