Irish troops could participate in a UN military mission in Iraq if such participation was mandated by the Government, a senior official said yesterday.
Mr John Deady, a counsellor in the UN section at the Department of Foreign Affairs, said it was always possible that the Defence Forces would participate if the UN adopted a resolution to deploy a mission.
However, he told a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs that such a resolution would not necessarily mean that the Defence Forces would be sent. Such a decision was for the Government.
He said he could not meaningfully comment other than to say that UN authorisation would be required.
The former Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, said the debate on Irish foreign policy was moving ahead of the public's perception of the main issues.
"There's certainly a very strong feeling that the policy ground is being moved forward, and the population at large is not being taken into the confidence of the policy-makers," he said.
"There is a changing policy-front, and I'm not too sure where it's going."
He added: "There seems to be a notion that the UN, NATO and the Rapid Reaction Force are in actual fact the same force but wearing different hats at different times.
"It's getting more difficult to understand from the lay perspective."
Mr Noonan was speaking after a joint presentation on "The Defence Forces and UN Peacekeeping Operations" by the Defence Forces, the Department of Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
He criticised the fact that committee members had received the paper by the Defence Forces and the Departments only shortly before yesterday's meeting.
The Labour TD Mr Michael D. Higgins said the discussion was going ahead in an extraordinary manner. He complained that issues of "technical provision" were being discussed over the fundamental principles of Irish foreign policy.
A senior Department of Defence official, Mr Ciaran Murphy, described UN missions as "coalitions of the willing" in his initial presentation.
He said later he did not intend to use the expression in the current colloquial sense, a reference to the US "war on terrorism".
While a UN mandate was required to sanction Irish involvement in any foreign mission, Mr Murphy said, UN and EU missions were "mutually reinforcing and complementary".
