Umstrittene Schweizer Sicherheitspolitik ... - ETH Zürich

Rory Montgomery
such operations as contributing to European and global security, and
also as a practical manifestation of good European citizenship and good
global citizenship.
There is a target set out in our White Paper of 10% of land forces to
be deployed overseas at any given time. That is not a legal limit, but a
target, and it can be exceeded for short periods of time. To date, individual
officers from the Air Corps and Naval Service have been seconded, but
we have never sent units of the Air Corps or the Naval Service. So it is
very much a question of the Army. This year, it is for the first time probable
that a very small number of Reserve officers with particular skills –
engineers and cartographers for example – will be seconded to take part
in missions for a period of time. In the EU as a whole, the proportion of
our troops serving overseas at any given time is at the higher end of the
scale. The British have the largest percentage of troops overseas, but for
2007, Ireland was in fourth or fifth position out of twenty-seven.
I will come now to the domestic legal and constitutional framework:
under our Constitution, the conduct of foreign policy is a matter for
the Government, under certain conditions laid down by law. The only
constitutional stipulation – with one exception to which I will come in
a second – is that the assent of our lower house of parliament is required
for Ireland to declare war or participate in a war. Other than that, it is a
matter for the Executive and, as I said, subject to certain conditions laid
down by legislations.
The Defence Acts, which were updated in 2006, set out three conditions
– having become known as the “triple lock” – for the deployment
overseas of more than twelve military personnel: firstly, the operation
must be approved by the Government; secondly, it must be approved by
way of a resolution in Parliament – this is a legislative and not a constitutional
requirement; thirdly, the operation must be mandated by the
United Nations.
The definition of a United Nations mandate was quite significantly
widened in 2006. Previously, the legislation had talked about “a force
established by the United Nations”. This was changed to “an international
force or body established, mandated, authorized, endorsed, supported,
approved or otherwise sanctioned by a resolution of the Security Coun-
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