28th October 2026
On the Triple Lock: The Free State Has Never Been Neutral
The tireless efforts of the Free State to drag Ireland and its people further into NATO and the imperialist war machine were taken to a new extreme last Thursday, as Leinster House voted to scrap the need for a UN mandate to deploy Irish forces abroad. Many are already demanding a return to the triple-lock and 'neutrality', but our demands must not end in a return to the status quo of quiet collaboration with imperialism. The neutral Ireland many now wish to return to was always a myth. Without an understanding of this reality, the neutrality movement is doomed to failure.
We must acknowledge that complicity and collaboration with imperialism is already rife across both the Free State and Occupied North. Many of the munitions used by the IOF are manufactured in factories across Ireland while software designed to surveil and target the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon and Iran is developed by tech giants based in Dublin. Our skies provide passage to American and RAF murderers through Shannon and Aldergrove, as the North is used as a recruiting ground for the British military. Even discounting this economic and logistical support, the reality of the Free State army's collaboration is impossible to ignore.
When questioned on what the details of scrapping the triple-lock would entail, Helen McEntee — the Minster for Defence, as well as the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade — ripped off the mask of Free State neutrality with its current involvement in both "peace" keeping and "peace" enforcement:
“I think there's a misconception or there's an attempt to suggest that our troops are on the ground in one context and one context only."
For decades Irish troops have sabotaged resistance operations against Zionism under supposedly neutral UN 'peacekeeping' missions. It is not peacekeeping, however, to sabotage the efforts of the resistance against Zionist aggression as Irish troops do in Lebanon. It is not peacekeeping to refuse to respond to that same Zionist aggression even when attacked by Zionist forces, as Irish troops have been for decades. The UN, which has supported the Zionist settler-colonial project since its beginning, is in no way neutral. As Lenin referred to its predecessor, the UN is no more than an alliance of robbers and a tool of imperialism.
To assert the triple-lock's neutrality is to ignore the damage and injustices that continue to be committed by Irish troops as part of so-called 'peacekeeping' forces. The need for UN approval has never prevented Irish troops serving imperialism by hindering resistance overseas, even if it has prevented their deployment in inter-imperialist wars.
The most pressing danger raised by the dismantling of the triple-lock is not an inter-imperialist war but the unrestricted and escalated deployment of Irish troops to back up imperialism in West Asia. The Free State is already willing to provide troops and an economic base for Zionism and would doubtlessly supply even more direct military support if given the chance.
We must not accept the Free State's lies of neutrality and shirk our responsibility to ensure Irish troops do not aid Zionism and genocide or forget the victims of Irish collaboration. Irish troops have no right to act against those fighting against colonialism and genocide. They have no right to masquerade as peacekeepers while aiding imperialism. Resistance movements facing the genocidal and colonial project of Zionism have the right to resist by any means necessary and the right to oppose any who would interfere with their fight for liberation, including targeting any Irish troops that may be deployed in their country.
The root of the collaboration of the Irish comprador class with imperialism is British domination and the servile, partitionist institutions it has set up in this country. Ireland has been a base of British imperialism for centuries, providing economic support to its armies together with troops to murder and die for the benefit of British capitalists. The army that will be deployed overseas is the same army that in Ireland has massacred and crushed Irish Republicans with British weapons and under British orders. The only way to end the use of Ireland's resources and people to further imperialism is to fight British domination and occupation in Ireland, through the fight for an Irish workers' republic.
Conradh Na Saoirse Náisiúnta demands and works to achieve not only neutrality in senseless inter-imperialist wars but an end to the deployment of Irish troops to serve Zionism, an end to Ireland's use as a base for British imperialism, and an end to Britain's domination of Ireland as a whole.
We demand not just neutrality but anti-imperialism and proletarian internationalism.
Beir Bua.