Paul Murphy: Demands Plebiscite to Defend Ireland's Triple Lock

The government wants to get rid of the triple lock so that you can send Irish troops abroad on EU or NATO-led missions. You won't tell us where you want to send these troops. I oppose that, I defend our neutrality, I believe a majority of people do. But I do want to focus here, at least initially, less on the substance of that, but on the democratic question. So you have refused, despite calls from many in the opposition, to hold a plebiscite to allow the people to decide. And so the closest thing we have to a view of the people is the presidential election, where neutrality was arguably the number one issue in the election. And there was a clear difference between your candidate and the candidate that I supported. And that difference was, both said they supported neutrality, but Heather Humphrey said it in the way that you say it, which is too emptied of any meaning. But on the triple lock, one candidate, Catherine Connolly, defended the triple lock, the other candidate opposed it. And the candidate who defended the triple lock got 63% of the vote. That's an expression of people's will. You really have no mandate to proceed with this, particularly in the context of the promise to keeping the triple lock being crucial in persuading people to change their mind in terms of the Second East Treaty referendum. People have voted for this effectively twice now, and you want to get rid of it without allowing them a second vote. You can't pick and choose which mandates you like. I have a mandate, a very clear mandate, a very large mandate from the people of Wicklow. And I have a mandate from... Not to get rid of the triple lock. No, but I have a mandate to bring forward legislative proposals. I have a mandate to table draft laws, as do you. I have a mandate to debate and discuss those laws. And my mandate is perfectly valid, as is the mandate of every member of this House. You can't pick and choose which mandates. We tend not to talk about the President, and we won't talk about the President, and I won't talk about the President or the President-elect in this House, other than to wish her every health, happiness and success that she prepares to take office. But what I would say is don't over-interpret results from any election. And I think this is a fascinating parliamentary question where you're deciding now to attach on to the Irish people. We haven't seen this since De Valera having to look into his heart to decide where the Irish people stood. You're deciding what motivated people to go out and vote in the presidential election. It's a very brave thing to do. I'm not sure it tallies with any evidence that we've seen from exit polling information that was published by Ireland Thinks. And one of the figures, when we want to talk about mandate, that I think we should talk about, may say is that 70% of the people of Ireland who had a right to vote either did not vote in the election or chose to spoil their vote. So let's talk about that as well. So I wouldn't get yourself carried away in deciding that the results of a President-elect, which was resoundingly won by President-elect Connolly, and I wish her every success. I wouldn't now, and I think we're beginning to see what's going to happen here, is you're going to attach on to the President-elect every view of every policy you wish. The President-elect was very clear in the election. I heard her many times saying that she will have no role at all in the substance of the legislation. She'll have a very clear constitutional role, which she will discharge with distinction, as every President of Ireland ever has. So that's the first point I'd make. The second point I'd make, just if we're on the issue of opinion polling, and Deputy O'Leary made the point that the majority of people of Ireland don't favour the change in the triple lock. I don't have the data in front of me, but I do remember seeing the Irish Times poll that was out only a number of weeks ago that showed opposition to changing the triple lock down and support for changing the triple lock up. So I actually think the Irish people are well able to differentiate between military neutrality and amending our laws in terms of how we dispatch and deploy our troops overseas. Yeah, I mean, the... Tornister speaks about his electoral mandate, no question. But look at the basis of your mandate. Look at your election manifesto, preserving our long-standing policy of active military neutrality, maintaining military neutrality. But no mention of redefining that, no mention of getting rid of the triple lock. So you do not have a mandate for what you're trying to attempt to do. There was a vaguest hint, kind of glance to it in terms of the Fianna Fáil manifesto. It didn't say repeal the triple lock, but you made no such commitment. And it's precisely the point. Yes, we're not claiming that the presidential election is the perfect... is a referendum on neutrality, pure and simple. But we want a referendum on neutrality. We want a referendum on the triple lock. We want the people to be able to decide. And, like, why are you so scared of allowing the people to have their view and their say on this? One point of substance I'd like you to ask is you repeatedly speak about, and the heads speak about, the principles of the UN Charter. That is deliberate, isn't it? You won't say commitment to abiding by the UN Charter or the Articles of the UN Charter. You are purely referring to the vague, broad principles of Article 2, which therefore don't bind you to stick to international law. So that's the space in which I'm willing to and wanting to engage, because I fully accept it quite clearly. We don't agree on the issue of changing the role of the triple lock. And I think your position is to leave things as they are. And, again, I don't say that flippantly. I think that is your position. My position is we're going to change it. I'm very happy to have a conversation about the substance of the legislation in terms of how we build in a degree of external oversight in terms of commitments that the legislation gives in relation to the UN Charter. Very happy to do that, and very happy to also tease through the detail you relate to there in terms of the specificity of the UN Charter and how the legislation can look at that. I don't believe we run back to the Irish people with a referendum on every piece of legislation. And I believe this is not an attempt to change Ireland's position on military neutrality. This is an issue to change how we dispatch peacekeeping troops overseas. And I think it's a kind of shirking our own responsibilities as legislators who are sent here to get on with the business of debating, teasing through those who are trusted by our constituents to do that in a considerable... The context is commitments in past referendums. Say that again. The context is commitments in past referendums. To military neutrality, which haven't changed. I also want to just say in relation to the last election, because this gets mentioned a lot, in fairness to my predecessor, the now Taoiseach, the process and the policy process of changing the triple lock was advanced in the last government. You'll remember the comments of Micheál Martin in the last government. We then went before the people, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, clearly not indicating we were going to change that position. We'd only articulated it a couple of weeks, a couple of months earlier as well. So I think we've been quite clear on this, this government and the last government. I think a majority of Irish people will come with us in relation to this issue. I think they differentiate between that and military neutrality as they should, because I'm massively in favour of military neutrality as well. And I welcome the recognition from the opposition today that we're not going to now extrapolate every policy issue for the next four years and over-interpret the results of the presidential election. Okay, go on, Micheál. Move on.