Sinead Gibney

Like we have at the moment a madman in the White House in the US who is using...

essentially at his disposal, different elements of the state to impose incredibly awful impositions on people, scooping up people in ICE raids and all the rest.

Like we cannot rely on our government to be the sole decision maker in the deployment of troops.

I do not believe that that allows us to be militarily neutral.

Yes.

Exactly.

We need guardrails.

And the ministers, various ministers have said that this new legislation will provide for guardrails.

That is nonsense.

They are simply not there.

I mean, besides removing the triple lock, they're also... So besides removing the UN mandate requirement, they're also extending the deployment of troops up to 50 before they even have to come to the Dáil.

But I don't agree that people need to just trust.

I mean, we are in a moment in time of increased militarisation.

And again, like, I mean...

I discussed this in the chamber a couple of weeks ago, and I talked about the myths that the government put out on this, which really make it so hard for people to cut through the argument.

They say, first of all, they're only trying to reform it.

That is nonsense.

This legislation will dismantle it completely.

They say that it's not central to our neutrality anyway.

And of course, Micheál Martin's quote on this is haunting him from 2013, where he said it.