Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said the Government would send Irish troops to Ukraine to be part of a peacekeeping force if there is a ceasefire and a peace deal that ends the war.
“We’re willing to be part of a ceasefire if there’s monitoring or a peacekeeping mission,” Mr Martin told The Irish Times Inside Politics podcast. “If a ceasefire is arrived at . . . we’ve made it very clear we’re willing to do that or at least to contribute to that.”
He said Ireland would not be willing to be part of a “deterrent force” as it would not be “in keeping with our policy of military neutrality or non-alignment”.
“It’s arguable that it wouldn’t be, but we don’t want to be part of that,” he said. “That’s not what we’re about. We don’t have the military capability for scenarios like that, but we are experienced at peacekeeping, and we are experienced in peace monitoring. We’ve done it, we’ve done it all over the world.”
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A meeting of countries prepared to be involved in the so-called “coalition of the willing” to assist Ukraine took place at Nato headquarters in Brussels this week, at which Ireland was represented.
On housing Mr Martin conceded that it would be difficult for the Government to reach the target of 300,000 new homes by the time of the next general election. But he said that the Government was working on a number of fronts to quicken the pace of housing delivery and to remove the barriers to increasing the number of new units.
He said that the private sector needed to step up, and said that a decision on reform of the rent pressure zone rules would be taken in the coming months, but he did not give any indication that tax incentives – an idea floated in recent months – were planned.
He was critical of some local authorities for failing to build enough – or any – social houses.
“I think there was a regrettable disconnection between many local authorities and house-building in previous decades,” he said. “It’s been difficult to crank up some of that. Some are better than others. I mean, I heard a figure about Dublin City Council and I stand to be corrected on it . . . but they’re not building social housing in this city to any appreciable degree. I’d love to be contradicted.”
He said the Minister for Housing would publish “a league table of local authorities to say, look, here they are, here are the ones that are not doing it”.
He added that changes in housing policy need to be made “immediately”.
“That’s what we have to do. This couple of months have to be key in that regard, not just for the electoral cycle, but there has to be a trajectory of activity that goes out beyond the next decade.”
Mr Martin defended the agreement to support the Government made with Independent TD Michael Lowry, the focus of much criticism from the Opposition in recent weeks. But he insisted there were no “deals” for constituency favours with Independent TDs – as one of the Independents, Barry Heneghan, had suggested this week.
“Well, I mean, I’m not responsible for what people call things. But I mean, I’m very clear there is no deal, specific deal in relation to any individual Independent TD. We studiously avoided any sort of agreement or any document in respect of any constituency.”
Asked what Independent TDs get from the arrangement with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, Mr Martin said: “Well, first of all, they get stable government for five years. Someone has to put a government together.”
