The intensifying row over the legislation to end the triple lock on peacekeeping missions led to disruption in the Dáil as Opposition parties held up signs with the message: Save Neutrality.
The protest followed testy exchanges between Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and Taoiseach Micheál Martin over the issue, which has united the entire Opposition.
She accused the Government of wanting to move away from peacekeeping and towards “military entanglement” and “military adventurism” with a guillotine on the second stage or introductory debate on the Bill, to be introduced on Wednesday.
Under the triple lock, the Government must secure UN approval before 12 or more members of the Defence Forces can be sent overseas with an armed international force or body. The Government wants to remove the UN requirement.
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McDonald said Irish people want no part of the “military might is right” agenda.
“Our neutrality keeps Ireland outside this dangerous military race to the bottom. It allows us to speak for freedom, human rights, and justice,” she said, adding the Government’s move is “an enormous step”.
McDonald warned, “it is literally inconceivable any taoiseach or government would push ahead with this without seeking first the permission of the Irish people”.
But rounding on the Sinn Féin leader, the Taoiseach said it was “outrageously hyperbolic” to suggest the State would abandon significant commitments to the rule of law and to many marginalised people in conflict and humanitarian crises worldwide.
He told her, “there is no balance to what you were saying. You use language like military adventurism, military entanglement. Who is going to engage in military adventurism? Do you think Dáil Éireann is?” he asked, angrily.
Martin said he would take “no lectures” from a party “that once supported nazism” during the second World War.
To repeated heckling, he said when Éamon de Valera affirmed the policy of neutrality, Sinn Féin leaders “colluded with the Hitler regime and Seán Russell was the key person” involved.
He said Sinn Féin “haven’t an inch of credibility” on neutrality because “for a long, long time, you saw you saw any conflict that Britain was involved in as Ireland’s opportunity, right beyond World War II, and so therefore you couldn’t have given a continental about Irish neutrality for many, many decades”.
He claimed Sinn Féin was saying Russia “should have a veto on Irish participation in peacekeeping”, and the US and China.
And he warned “the Lebanon Unifil mission is about to end with no prospect of our participation” in a follow-up because of the US decision not to support continuation of the mission.
During the Dáil protest, Sinn Féin, People Before Profit-Solidarity, Labour and some Social Democrats held up the posters, and Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy had to repeatedly insist they take them down, with Labour and Social Democrats the first to adhere to her call.
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Sinn Féin defence spokesman Donnchadh Ó Laoire insisted debate on the legislation not be guillotined tomorrow, a call echoed by Labour’s Duncan Smith, who said it was a “modest ask”.
People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Richard Boyd Barrett said guarantees on the triple lock were made in the Nice referendum. “When we pick up these signs, we’re holding you to account for commitments that were made to the Irish people about neutrality, which is their property, not yours.”
Independent Ireland leader Michael Collins said “the whole of this country is upset and concerned about this” and the debate should not be guillotined.
Government Chief Whip Mary Butler said the Bill would get three hours and 34 minutes of debate tomorrow. But she was repeatedly heckled when she said voting had to be completed by 9pm on Wednesday, as the clerk of the Dáil explained at the business committee “that voting has to be completed at 9pm because of the work-to-rule that we are under orders on”.
Butler rejected Opposition claims that the Government is “trying to rush the Bill”.
Later on Tuesday evening, a proposal to retain some connection with the United Nations as part of a triple lock mechanism was suggested at the meeting of Fianna Fáil TDs and Senators.
Former minister for defence Willie O’Dea suggested at its Parliamentary Party meeting that the general assembly could provide a basis for mandating peacekeeping missions.
O’Dea was one of several TDs who argued that UN General Assembly be explored as an alternative to avenue to the Security Council as a means of achieving UN approval.
The assembly has not given permission for a mission in over 70 years, having deferred such decisions to the Security Council. Vetoes exercised by its five permanent members has resulted in no UN peacekeeping mission being sanctioned since 2014.
One proposal made at the meeting was that decisions and criticism made by the General Assembly on international conflicts could perhaps give some legal basis for a peacekeeping mandate involving Irish troops.
