Committee calls for clarity on Government proposals to change triple lock
The Joint Committee on Defence and National Security published a report into the Government's proposals to change the 'triple lock', which is the requirement for Government, Dáil and UN approval to send more than 12 Irish soldiers overseas.
The main change would see the need for formal UN approval for such missions removed and replaced with a stipulation that the Defence Forces deployment would be in accordance with the UN Charter and international law.
The Government has argued this will prevent the permanent members of the UN Security Council – Russia, China, the UK, the US and France – from vetoing Irish peacekeeping missions.
Critics see it as an erosion of Irish neutrality and a move towards European militarisation.
The Government's Defence (Amendment) Bill 2025 also looks to expand on the basis for Irish soldiers being dispatched outside the State.
In its report published on Wednesday, the committee makes 27 recommendations asking for further safeguards or clarity on the draft changes.
This includes a call to define what 'strengthening international security' means in the context of the Bill.
It said that the legislation should specify that the phrase will not include the taking part in missions where cluster munitions or anti-personnel mines are used.
'The Joint Committee recommends that the legislation potentially explore definitions for how the terms 'conflict prevention' and 'strengthening international security' will be interpreted in Ireland and outline clear parameters and safeguards for deployment in these cases,' it said.
It also recommended that, 'at minimum', an independent legal review should be carried out before Irish troops are deployed abroad with an international force.
The findings should be made available to Oireachtas members and a version 'redacted where necessary' is made public.
The committee also recommends that the proposals to increase the number of Irish troops allowed to be deployed without Dáil approval from 12 to 50, should include, 'at a minimum, oversight provisions' from two committees: defence and foreign affairs.
Ireland has been taking part in UN peacekeeping missions since 1958 and the triple lock has been in place since 1960.
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Irish Examiner
28 minutes ago
- Irish Examiner
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The law of criminal libel was so broad that, as he later observed, 'every letter I ever published could be declared a libel' and the libel law could 'produce a conviction with a proper judge and jury for The Lord's Prayer with due legal inuendoes'. More damaging still was the composition of the jury — hand-picked to ensure conviction. With characteristic boldness, O'Connell confronted this unfairness head-on, telling the jurors: 'Gentlemen, he [the Attorney General] thinks he knows his men; he knows you; many of you signed the no-popery petition... you would not have been summoned on this jury if you had entertained liberal sentiments'. Rather than being cowed by these disadvantages, O'Connell turned them into weapons. He began by meeting Saurin's personal attacks, describing the Attorney General's speech as a 'farrago of helpless absurdity'. When Saurin had stooped to calling Magee a ruffian and comparing him to 'the keeper of a house of ill fame', O'Connell lamented how far Saurin fell below the standards of the great Irish barristers such as Curran and Ponsonby: 'Devoid of taste and of genius, how can he have had memory enough to preserve this original vulgarity — he is, indeed, an object of compassion; and, from my inmost soul, I bestow on him my forgiveness and my bounteous pity'. O'Connell was even able to use Saurin's own words against him. When the Attorney General accused Magee of Jacobinism, O'Connell recalled Saurin's defence of himself against the same charge in 1800, when Saurin, then anti-union, had declared that 'agitation is ... the price necessarily paid for liberty'. O'Connell's response was devastating: 'We have paid the price, gentlemen, and the honest man refuses to give us the goods'. 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His defence of John Magee shows the difference a single barrister, armed with skill, courage, and unwavering principle, can make. Seán Guerin SC. Picture: Conor McCabe Photography. Seán Guerin SC is Chair of the Council of The Bar of Ireland
Irish Examiner
28 minutes ago
- Irish Examiner
Colin Sheridan: Obama's silence on Gaza makes Freedom of Dublin award deeply problematic
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Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Irish Examiner view: We need more gardaí but facial recognition could help the force do its job
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Live facial recognition technology uses video footage of crowds passing a camera and automatically compares their images against a police database of people on a 'watch list'. Senior officers will, no doubt, be keenly observing what happens next door. The UK, along with Germany, is already Europe's leading exponent of CCTV with more than 5m units in position compared to the few thousand we have in Ireland. Now the Metropolitan Police, the UK's largest force, is set to double its use of live facial recognition to up to 10 deployments every week. It justifies the move as part of a restructuring to offset the loss of 1,400 officers and 300 staff in a budgetary crisis. Its new tactics will be implemented at the sometimes tempestuous Notting Hill Carnival at the end of this month. The Met's commissioner, Mark Rowley, says: It's a fantastic piece of technology. It's very responsibly used, and that's why most of the public support it. 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But a joke of the worst possible kind, one which has gone on too long. Shoppers enjoying a hula hoop demonstration in Cork in the run-up to Christmas, 1958. Joan Anderson, who sparked the hula hoop craze in the US died this week aged 101. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive It would be easy to complain this morning but, to draw a lesson from Monty Python, it is better to look on the bright side of life. And there is plenty there to lighten our load. American scientists have just confirmed that the world's longest streak of lightning — a 'megaflash' — covered more than 500 miles, from Texas to the outskirts of Kansas City. Meanwhile a holidaymaker rockpooling on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides has rediscovered a species of jellyfish, Depastrum cyathiforme, thought to have been extinct for 50 years. If both these reports carry a whiff of what used to known in newsrooms as 'the silly season', then we commend the heartwarming story following the death of the Australian woman who brought the concept of the hula hoop to the US, igniting one of the biggest crazes of the previous century. Joan Anderson, who died this week aged 101, failed to gain financially from a fad which had hundreds of millions of participants. She filed a lawsuit against the toy company which exploited her idea and eventually settled for minor compensation. But, in a message we might all usefully reflect on in 2025, Joan said: 'Why be angry with something you can't change? The world isn't fair but life goes on. 'I had a great life. My husband lived to be 87 and we had 63 wonderful years together. 'Happiness is the best revenge.' What's your view on this issue? You can tell us here Last supper for Gregg Wallace 'Who's the Daddy?' It's just the sort of slang phrase you can imagine being used by Gregg Wallace at the height of his laddish popularity as a TV personality, something that viewers will be able to experience for conceivably the last time starting next week. Allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and language were made against presenter Gregg Wallace after the forthcoming MasterChef series was recorded. Picture: BBC/PA It's certainly an adequate description of MasterChef, which in its various iterations, can be viewed as the durable forerunner of international format programming. From its launch in 1990, under the rather different stewardship of Loyd Grossman, it has been mimicked by a number of hugely successful shows all utilising a comfortingly predictable participatory and voyeuristic formula. What is common to all these programmes is that they contain lesser or greater amounts of humiliation for the contestants and the occasional soupcon of cruelty, presumably just enough to meet modern tastes without, showrunners hope, tipping over into something darker. The global MasterChef franchise has been better than most at attracting interest, watched by hundreds of millions worldwide. The upcoming series, filmed last year and which will begin on BBC One next Wednesday, was produced before allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and language were made against Wallace. His co-presenter John Torode was accused of making a racist comment — euphemistically known as 'the N-word' — at a social gathering more than five years ago. He says he has no recollection of doing so. After an independent review by the Lewis Silkin legal practice, which also has offices in Dublin and Belfast, Torode was told that his contract with the BBC would not be renewed. The Silkin team upheld 45 allegations against Wallace including claims of inappropriate sexual language and one incident of unwelcome physical contact over a 17-year-timeline. The decision on whether to air this latest series featuring the two sacked presenters has been fraught. It has been on hold since the accusations emerged with the BBC deciding it should go ahead after most of the contestants supported its broadcast. John Torode and Gregg Wallace. The decision on whether to air the already-recorded latest series of MasterChef featuring the two sacked presenters has been fraught. File picture: PA/BBC/Shine TV Most, but not all. One participant wanted the whole show canned, and has now been edited out of the final version. 'For me, it's about the enabling environment,' she said. 'It's that complicity. Those individual powerful men do not [act] in isolation. There is an enabling environment, turning a blind eye ... it's about years of these institutions not being accountable.' Sincere though these expressions are, based on the evidence this seems extreme. All potential viewers have the sanction of the on-off button. How many use it is likely to determine whether we get to see the Celebrity MasterChef series and the Christmas special. Wallace looks to be a serious loser. His access to international networks is being replaced by his reported plan to launch a private chat room (€13.50 a month) for men over the age of 50. 'Real talk, real support — hosted by Gregg Wallace. Fitness, food, lifestyle, laughs. Sign up below and pop in to say hello' — says the blurb. It sounds a more measured approach than one of his responses to complaints made against him. On that occasion, ignoring the dictum that, when you are in a hole, you should stop digging, he hit out at 'middle class women of a certain age'. Perhaps this is a lesson learned. Perhaps chippy masculinity will come back into fashion. But that is probably not the way to bet.
