As I outlined in a recent article, the Government’s entire excuse for tearing up the Triple Lock rests on a very specific fairytale: Taoiseach Micheál Martin and his colleagues want us to believe that the UN Security Council is suddenly and uniquely paralysed, and that overseas missions are particularly under threat now as a result.
Politicians today are effectively telling the public that back in the good old days, the big global superpowers played nicely together and approved peacekeeping missions with a smile, but today, big bad nations like Russia and China are using their vetoes in a totally unprecedented way, which calls for drastic new measures like ditching the Triple Lock.