The three-way presidential race between Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, and Heather Humphreys has helped bring the Triple Lock into the conversation. However, the media and the government candidates are at pains to ensure the issue is not conflated with abandoning Irish neutrality.
Humphreys and Gavin have faced no challenge in presenting the Triple Lock as an impediment to Irish sovereignty and our government’s supposedly flawless decision-making. Referencing the Triple Lock at her campaign launch, Humphreys said “we are an independent country and we are able to make our own decisions” [1]. Speaking to RTÉ, Gavin said Ireland should “have the confidence as a nation in terms of the executive, the government, the Oireachtas, to make decisions where we put our troops”.
If the Defence (Amendment) Bill 2025 passes in its current form, government ministers will have the power to send up to 100 of our sons and daughters off to kill and be killed in military interventions without a UN mandate—i.e., illegal EU and NATO-led wars. By securing a simple Dáil majority, there will be no upper limit to the number of forces deployed. The common use of the government whip means this safeguard is mere window dressing.
According to the bill, the defence forces will deploy as part of an ‘international force established, led, organised, or supported’ by the UN, the OSCE, the EU, or ‘any other regional arrangement or body that operates in a manner consistent with the United Nations Charter and international law’. This meaningless definition is thrown in to soften the blow of undermining the UN Charter as a matter of official government policy. In reality, the government wants to muck in with Britain, France, Germany, and the US. In other words, NATO, the Axis of Genocide—the powers that have been supplying weapons, logistics, and diplomatic support for a genocide for two years. The Irish government does not even comply with its obligations under the UN Charter when it comes to their complicity in facilitating the transfer of arms and funds to the genocide in Gaza.
All this will amount to an unprecedented change in national policy. The pillars of the Triple Lock have been in effect since the Defence (Amendment) Act of 1960. We managed to stay neutral through a World War. We stayed neutral and relied on the UN mandate system through a Cold War and the so-called global ‘War on Terror’. Now, all of a sudden, we are being told this is a brave new world; that the UN Security Council veto system established by the UN Charter is a hindrance to our sovereignty over where our peacekeepers are deployed.
These arguments are an inversion of reality. It is abundantly clear the government is losing interest in UN peacekeeping missions. The Defence (Amendment) Bill is pivoting us towards ‘strengthening international security’—meaning war-fighting missions. Meanwhile, the government has been reducing force numbers in UN peacekeeping missions and redirecting them to EU battlegroups.
That the government and the media have attempted to frame abandoning the Triple Lock as a matter of strengthening Irish sovereignty is criminal. Article 6.1 of the Irish constitution says sovereignty derives from the people, who have the final word on all questions of national policy. The Irish people exercised this right when we rejected the Nice Treaty in 2001. This rejection laid the ground for the Seville Declaration, which safeguards the Triple Lock and Irish neutrality in the context of the threat of increased EU militarism posed by the Nice and Lisbon treaties.
The necessity for a UN mandate for deploying Irish defence forces abroad is not some onerous imposition from foreign powers like China, Russia, or the US. It is a positive restriction on the government, won by the Irish people expressing their sovereign right to decide a question of national policy.
Now the government wants to overturn this without going back to the people, in order to do exactly what we feared they would—get us embroiled in EU and NATO militarism and wars for the interests of genocidal Western elites.
If the government parties gave a damn about our neutrality and sovereignty, they would uphold international law and stop allowing Ireland’s airports, airspace, and financial institutions to be used by the imperialist core to arm and fund a genocide. If they cared about democracy, there would be an open and honest debate around the Triple Lock and its impact on neutrality. But they know that over two-thirds of the public consistently support an active neutrality for Ireland. So all we get are lies, fearmongering, and muddied waters.
To quote Catherine Connolly: “it’s a fundamental twisting of language, where one day, or one year the Triple Lock is an integral or core part of our neutrality, and the next day it’s no longer. How could anyone trust ye, in relation to the misuse and abuse of language like that?”
