Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has called for the removal of the 'triple lock' which requires Ireland to get UN approval if it wants to send Defence Forces personnel abroad as peacekeepers.
Speaking at the annual Michael Collins Memorial at Béal na Bláth in West Cork, Ms Carroll MacNeill said Ireland is proud of its global peacekeeping missions, but in reality, a new peacekeeping mission has not been sanctioned since 2014.
Under existing rules, any foreign deployment of 12 or more Irish Defence Forces personnel can only take place when it has been approved by the Dáil, the Government and has received a United Nations mandate.
"We cannot be held by others. We must remove the triple lock and take charge of our own affairs and be held to account for own decisions," she told the gathering on the 103rd anniversary of the ambush and shooting dead of the first Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Defence Forces.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said the decision in 2001 to "hand the decision making" to the UN Security Council, has meant Ireland has taken away its own sovereignty "as though we are incapable of deciding where our peacekeepers should be".
Ireland, she said, condemns "the utterly illegal and genocidal actions of Russia and Israel and yet we handed our sovereign decision making to some of them because we cannot trust ourselves?
"This is not the thing of a sovereign people. There have been no new peacekeeping missions approved by the UN Security Council since 2014, the year Russia first invaded Ukraine - again.
"We cannot be held by others. We must remove the triple lock and take charge of our own affairs and be held to account for our own decisions," she told the gathering.
In a wide-ranging address entitled 'Thinking - in Long Strides', a reference to a phrase Collins reportedly used about himself "I think in long strides". Ms Carroll MacNeill also asked that having built the walls of a "successful and resilient State, what is our next ambition?"
She cited energy security and ensuring enduring sovereign wealth.
"To those who object today to the development of solar and wind energy, I say: please no, please think in long strides. This is not a short-term issue. Energy security is integral to our sovereignty."
She said she believed the Future Ireland Fund has the potential to allow the State build enduring sovereign wealth and to avoid the "boom-bust cycles" of the past, if "we have the political discipline to leave it alone".
She concluded with a reference to nine-year-old Harvey Morrison, who had spina bifida and scoliosis and died last month.
"Let me be clear, we can and should debate the issues in our society and in our politics. As is very clear from another most important commemoration this weekend for a beautiful young boy named Harvey, there are many ways our society can and should do better by its citizens.
"We can, we must and we will do better."
Fine Gael MEP Sean Kelly, who declared his interest in running for the presidency earlier this week, was warmly greeted by Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill on her arrival to the monument at Béal na Bláth.
Ask about his decision to put his name forward, Mr Kelly said it was "a very long week last week ".
"It was a bit difficult, no doubt about it because of the nomination process and I need 20 members of the parliamentary party.
"That has been, surprisingly to me, a little more difficult to get that I thought, but a week is a long time in politics and there is another week to run, so let's see," he said.
Each year, a commemoration is held at the site of Collins’ death on the Sunday closest to 22 August.
Mr Collins was 31 years old when he died.
Road access to the site is closed from 10.30am until 5pm to facilitate the commemoration.
