 A minority of ministers – two, according to Desmond O'Malley – would have favoured such a course, but the Irish Army was completely unprepared for an operation of this kind.The majority of the cabinet opposed military intervention, and Lynch took no such action, though he commissioned a study named "Exercise Armageddon".As the violence continued, the Minister for External Affairs, Patrick Hillery, met the British Foreign Secretary and also went to the United Nations in a plea to send a peacekeeping force to the North and to highlight the Irish government's case.