Government wants to send Irish troops on ‘Israel-friendly mission’, Mary Lou McDonald claims

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has claimed the Government wants to scrap the triple lock to deploy Defence Forces personnel “as part of an EU mission to act in the interests of Israel in disarming Hizbullah”.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin angrily rejected her claim as a “despicable, outrageous distortion of truth”.

In testy exchanges during Dáil Leaders’ Questions, he in turn accused her of “getting more desperate by the day”.

He insisted “no proposal has come to Government”, adding: ”We’ve made no decision in relation to it.”

But “either way”, they would not be placing Irish troops in harm’s way and would not have a partisan role other than “to support the Lebanese government in terms of training”.

“We support Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity,” which the Taoiseach said Israel is violating. “But we will not be in any way involved in the false narrative that you’ve articulated.”

Raising the issue for the second day running, McDonald said changing the law will carry “the most profound implications for this country for generations to come”.

The Government seeks to remove the requirement for a United Nations mandate for Defence Forces missions involving more than 12 personnel, leaving decisions to approval by the Dáil and Government.

McDonald claimed deploying personnel without a UN mandate is “destructive and dangerous”.

It “legally defines Irish deployments as bona fide peacekeeping efforts”.

She added that the UN mandate “has protected Irish troops, often in the face of sustained hostility and danger, as they carried out their duties wearing the blue helmet and under the Irish flag”.

McDonald claimed the Government wants to “throw all of that away to undo generations of honourable work”.

“You want to change Ireland’s role from peacekeeper in Lebanon . . . [to instead] “deploy them as part of an EU mission to act in the interests of Israel in disarming Hizbullah, placing our soldiers as partisans and in the way of danger to advance Israeli interests, a mission led by the very EU governments that actively arm and support Israel’s genocide in Palestine.”

The plan, she said, was to “scrap the triple lock, fall into line with Europe’s Nato members, and that is dangerous, and it makes a mockery of our neutrality”.

The Government would “deploy Irish soldiers on a partisan, Israel-friendly mission, along with soldiers from the very countries arming Israeli genocide”.

The Sinn Féin leader described this as “despicable” and said the very minimum required for this “destructive course of action” was a referendum.

Responding first in Irish, the Taoiseach told McDonald “you’re not telling the truth at all”.

He said: “I find it extraordinary that you have a brass neck to come in here and say that somehow we now want to get involved in supporting Israel.”

The UN Security Council is dysfunctional, he added. “I would say instead of a UN mandate, you’re saying it has to have a Russian mandate,” he said to opposition heckling.

Russia is one of five permanent Security Council members, that also include the UK, France, the US and China, each with a veto.

Martin hit out at Sinn Féin and said “independent foreign policy should mean we should give ourselves greater flexibility in terms of being able to be involved in peacekeeping”.

Ireland had played a “very noble role in Lebanon” between Israel and Hizbullah. He reminded McDonald “Hizbullah has murdered some of our soldiers in the past” and the Unifil mission was being stopped because the Security Council could not sanction its continuation.

McDonald acknowledged Hizbullah had taken Irish soldiers’ lives but said “so too has the Israeli Defense Forces”.

It was “utterly despicable and utterly outrageous that any Irish Government would seek to place Irish soldiers in direct harm’s way in a partisan manner in the middle of a complex, protracted, dangerous civil war, explicitly with a mandate to disarm one party, in this case Hizbullah”, she said.