The Committee on Defence and National Security will be giving pre-legislative scrutiny on Thursday morning to the Defence Amendment Bill 2025 that proposes to abolish the Triple Lock. The National Platform has submitted the following reasons why we believe the Triple Lock should be retained.
In the 2001 Nice Treaty referendum, my colleagues in this organisation and I were designated by the late Chief Justice T.A. Finlay and his fellow Referendum Commissioners as one of two bodies that could supply citizens with information on that Treaty – the European Movement (Ireland) and its then secretary, Mr Alan Dukes, being the other. Ireland’s National Declaration on the Triple Lock was first made in the context of the Treaty of Nice, to encourage people to vote in favour of ratifying that treaty in the second Nice referendum in 2002.
1.The Triple Lock was a commitment given to pass the Nice Treaty.
That commitment of the 2002 Bertie Ahern Government and the 2009 Brian Cowen Government in the Nice and Lisbon Treaty referendums respectively was an implicit contract between Irish Governments and people, and it would be politically dishonourable and cynical, a grave breach of public trust, and quite probably unconstitutional for a later Irish Government to repudiate it now. Commitment to the Triple Lock was embodied in Ireland’s solemn “National Declaration” that was issued by the then Government before the second Nice Treaty referendum in 2002. So far as I am aware, no Irish Government before then or since has issued a solemn National Declaration of this kind, embodying a fundamental and implicitly permanent policy commitment. This makes any attempt to repudiate a key element of the National Declaration now all the more serious. That this should be attempted for the supposed reason that the veto power of the members of the United Nations Security Council in some way “threatens” Irish sovereignty is surely absurd when one recalls that Ireland has recognised and abided by the rules and structure of the United Nations without question since first joining that body in 1955. As the accompanying editorial from the Sunday Times (Ireland) aptly put it: “To say today that Ireland would be exercising its sovereignty if it were to abandon the Triple Lock is a Kafkaesque way of looking at things. The lock was a direct consequence of the Irish people exercising their sovereignty by rejecting Nice I. It was then used as an enticement to get voters to endorse Nice II”.
2. It would show other countries that the Irish government acted dishonestly regarding an EU Treaty.
The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties requires that States act honestly and in good faith when ratifying treaties with one another. The Seville Declaration issued by the other EC Member States in response to Ireland’s National Declaration showed that they regarded Ireland as ratifying the Nice Treaty on the basis of maintaining an indefinite commitment to keeping the Triple Lock. Repudiating the Triple Lock now would show Ireland’s fellow EU Member States that Ireland acted dishonestly at that time as regards its own citizen-voters and its fellow EC partners.
3. The Triple Lock commitment was supported by all parties at the time of the commitment.
It was mentioned in the Government’s Information Guide to voters that was issued on the Nice Treaty at the time and it was quoted in the Referendum Commission’s explanatory material that was sent to all voting households in the second Nice Treaty referendum that year. All parties in the Oireachtas supported Ireland’s National Declaration, with its commitment to a permanent Triple Lock at the time. Six years later, when voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution in the 2008 referendum on that – many doing so out of the similar concerns for Irish neutrality as in Nice One – Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s Government reiterated the Triple Lock commitment. In the Lisbon Two referendum in 2009 Mr Justice Frank Clarke, Chairman of the Referendum Commission and later Chief Justice, drew attention to the Triple Lock’s significance for voters who were concerned about neutrality in the Referendum Commission’s Explanatory Guide for voters that the Commission sent to all households in the State. Mr Justice Clarke did the same in several question-and-answer sessions that he conducted orally on radio and TV for the information of voters coming up to the Lisbon Two referendum.
4. The maintenance of a meaningful Irish neutrality policy was traditionally a core value of the Fianna Fail Party.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was a member of the 2001/2 Fianna Fail Government that adopted Ireland’s National Declaration on the Triple Lock. He was also a member of the Brian Cowen Fianna Fail Government that reiterated the maintenance of the Triple Lock commitment as an inducement to voters concerned at the impact of the Lisbon Treaty (EU Constitution) on Irish neutrality to change their votes from No to Yes in the 2009 Lisbon Two referendum and so permit the EU Constitution to come into force across the EU. Taoiseach Micheál Martin has variously referred to the Triple Lock commitment over the years as “a core element” and “the very heart and soul” of Ireland’s neutrality policy. A recent Irish Times opinion poll showed that some half of Fianna Fail supporters were against abolishing the Triple Lock, and that fraction would almost certainly have been larger if the question asked had not been a slanted one capitalising on current public hostility to Russia. Supporting the abolition of the Triple Lock now would be a repudiation of the best and most progressive traditions of the Fianna Fail Party.
5. Protecting our national interest – and not getting drawn into foreign wars.
The provision in Head 6 (6) of the proposed Bill that Ireland will participate in an International Force only if that acts in accordance with “the principles of the United Nations Charter” or “the principles of justice and international law” is no guarantee whatever that the State will not participate in or be drawn into foreign wars that are against the national interest. It is a fact of international life that States always claim to be acting in accordance with UN principles, the principles of justice and international law when they go to war or embark on foreign military adventures. Israel justifies its current bombing of Gaza by claiming that it is acting in accordance with the internationally recognised right of self-defence if a State is attacked. Vladimir Putin claims that Russia’s war in Ukraine is to assert the right to national self-determination of the Russian-speaking peoples of Crimea and East Ukraine, in accordance with the UN Charter and international law. US involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was claimed by the relevant Governments to be similarly justified. This provision in the proposed Bill has nothing of the binding force and legal certainty that is given by the Triple Lock requirement that Irish involvement in foreign military operations should have a UN mandate either from the Security Council or the General Assembly.
6. The Treaty of Lisbon (EU Constitution) gave the new European Union that it established in 2009 its own legal personality for the first time and endowed it with the constitutional form of a Federation, in which State sovereignty is divided between the Federal level of the EU/Brussels and the national Member State level, and everyone has two citizenships, of the EU and of their particular Member State, with citizens’ rights and duties at each level – just as in such classical Federations as the USA or Germany. As real and not just notional citizens of the post-Lisbon European Union we have the normal constitutional duty of defending the EU if it is attacked, and being subject to conscription if necessary for that purpose. The Triple Lock requirement of a UN Security Council or General Assembly mandate for Irish participation in foreign military operations would, however, provide a legal safeguard against the full implementation of this EU citizen requirement for Ireland and Irish citizens in the event of the EU being involved in war. Once the Triple Lock goes there is nothing practical to prevent Ireland participating in EU or NATO military operations, or indeed any other foreign military adventure that an Irish Government may decide to get involved in, however much this was against the national interest.
7.We should not be dragged into a massive European arms drive. It is our opinion that a reason for proposing to abolish the Triple Lock at this time is to give symbolical and practical support by Ireland to the massive European arms drive – originally called “ReArm Europe” but now rechristened “SAFE”(Security for a Free Europe) – that proposes the spending of €700 billion on arms over the coming decade for the benefit of the profits of Europe’s arms manufacturers and to justify militarizing and further centralizing the EU. Much of this project that is supposedly necessitated by an whipped-up war-scare over Russia. Vladimir Putin’s army could not take Kyiv, just a few miles over Russia’s borders, in 2022, but Putin supposedly plans to sweep across the European continent and even threaten Ireland in the coming period! That is an absurd fantasy.
Ireland should retain the Triple Lock and her neutrality. Our sons and daughters should noy be sent to die in wars or conflicts not of our making.
Anthony Coughlan is an Irish academic, secretary of the National Platform, and retired Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College, Dublin.