Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We had a junior Minister appointed to the Department of Defence in the recent reshuffle but given absolutely no responsibility in that Department. It is the second time this has happened.

As a democracy, we are one of the outliers in the world with respect to the fact that we do not have a published national security strategy. There was a statement published some time ago but that is not a strategy. In addition, we have a national security analysis centre and I know of nothing that it has produced. If we are honest in looking around Europe right now, Europe is on a war footing and the amount of money that is being pumped into defence all over the world is phenomenal. Poland has increased its expenditure on defence to 3.5%. The average across Europe is 3% but here in Ireland it is 0.2%. Does anybody in this country give a continental damn about the future security of this country? We have gas pipelines coming in from Scotland. We have undersea cables coming in from the United States. We have one naval ship to patrol all of that. Does anybody honestly believe it is being patrolled?

As for the Defence Forces, 50 people a month net are leaving the Defence Forces. We are down to 7,500 Defence Forces personnel and a junior Minister has been appointed and told she should not bother going near the Department of Defence as she has no business going there. That is wrong in every sense of the word. By the way, it was the Tánaiste and Minister for Defence, Deputy Micheál Martin, himself who said in the Dáil last week that the junior Minister has no role there.

It is time for the country to be asked how many Ministers we need. There are Ministers with seven or eight portfolios trying to run Departments. It would not happen in any organisation in the world other than here. With Minister carrying several portfolios, it is not possible to have the necessary level of oversight. We have to start getting serious about security in this country. If we want to be truly neutral, we have to defend our neutrality with significant expenditure on defence.