Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I agree with him. I am not sure global democracy is in retreat but it certainly needs to push back to protect its existence. There are certainly parts of the world where it is under attack. That goes for human rights standards, respect for international law and a range of other things.

Our commitment to multilateralism is absolute when it comes to foreign policy. Small countries cannot survive if they rely on unilateralism and transaction-based foreign policy, where countries pair off with each other on the basis of supporting each other on important things. That is a disaster for small countries. What we need is a world set of rules protected by international law, global standards from a human rights perspective, and conventions that countries respect, even in conflict situations, as opposed to a might is right, brutality rules type approach, of which, unfortunately, we have seen a number of examples, not just in Ukraine but elsewhere. That is a given and I think it is something on which we can all agree.

The UN is central to Irish foreign policy. It is far from perfect. It is incredibly frustrating at times when the Security Council sees sensible resolutions that have the support of well over 100 countries in the General Assembly get vetoed. When Ireland, for example, tried to get a resolution on climate and security agreed, it was vetoed by Russia. We had 119 co-sponsors from the General Assembly who wanted that resolution passed. An overwhelming majority recognised the impact of climate on security issues and it got vetoed. It is very frustrating stuff. Despite all of that, however, it is by far the best we have in terms of trying to assist and help people.

If we think about it, and I will stop giving members statistics after this, 100 million people are displaced in the world today. Most of them are in refugee camps and virtually all of them are being fed by international organisations, predominantly led by the UN. I have just been to the Syrian-Turkish border where Ireland has specific responsibility, along with Norway, to keep humanitarian access into north-western Syria. It is the only international border crossing into Syria. It is called Bab al-Hawa. That is literally feeding, clothing and providing medicines for four million people, which is almost our population. If you cross the border there, there is effectively a tented city for as far as the eye can see made up predominantly of children, only 20% of whom actually get any form of education at all. This is the scale we are talking about in terms of the consequences of a 12- or 13-year conflict in Syria. Most people living in that area in north-west Syria in the Idlib province have not only been displaced once, twice or three times but some of them have been ten to 15 times in terms of being moved on from different towns that have been attacked and brutalised and so on. I just want to give members a sense of the pressures to which the UN system is responding in keeping people alive but also the other frustrations that the system has not been able to get over.

In terms of the Reserve overseas, a reservist has actually gone on a NATO training course in the past couple of weeks, which I am sure Deputy Berry will remind me of, and which I think is a sign of things to come, not in terms of NATO membership but in terms of reservists going overseas and improving their skill sets so they can be a stronger asset in supporting the Permanent Defence Force. We do not have reservists going overseas on rotation yet. That is something on which I will be relying on the Chief of Staff and the general staff to come back with recommendations in terms of how they incorporate that, particularly around specialist areas. This is not about competing with the Permanent Defence Force or taking opportunities from it. It is quite the opposite. It is about supplementing what it is doing, adding specialties and potentially giving options in terms of earlier rotation for family reasons, flexibility, work-life balance and all the other things. If people need a break for whatever reason, reservists should be able to fill in there. There is great interest within the Reserve in serving overseas. I met the Reserve Defence Force Representative Association, RDFRA, about that the week before last.

As for the aptitude test, there is a myth out there that no one is applying to join the Defence Forces. Loads of people are applying to join the Defence Forces, but that is not translating into increased numbers to the extent we need. Roughly, we are seeing between 500 and 600 people join the Defence Forces and between 500 and 600 people leave the Defence Forces every year. We have seen either a small decline or a small increase in net terms over recent years, and that is not good enough. What we need to see, if we are to be serious about getting to the numbers we plan to get to, are significant net increases of people in the Defence Forces each year to get back up to an establishment of 9,500 and then to go well beyond that in order to get to what I would like to see, which is a Permanent Defence Force establishment of about 11,500 and close to another 3,000 people in the Reserve. We are 1,000 people below the establishment figure of 9,500 in the Permanent Defence Force, so we need to add about 3,000 people to the Permanent Defence Force and about 3,000 people to our Reserve. That is 6,000 new men and women in our Defence Forces. The questions are how we do it, how long it will take, how we manage the training in that regard, how we manage the intake, how we keep standards while getting more people in and how we maintain the thresholds needed to ensure we have the standards we have currently in respect of fitness, aptitude, skill sets and so on. Those are massive challenges, but those are the questions the commission has asked and that is the challenge it has put to us.

From my experience of the Defence Forces, when a clear challenge is put to them, with clear results required and timelines to get us there, they are very good at delivering once there is a plan to do that. It is seen as a mission to be accomplished. My job is to make sure that they have the resources and the policy platform to be able to do that and that they have the expertise. Some of it will need to be sourced externally to deliver those kinds of extraordinary outcomes over the next five to seven years, which is the time horizon I think we will be looking at. Part of that is the aptitude test stuff, but I have to rely on the Defence Forces to come back to me with recommendations. I will not lower the standards of the Defence Forces to get more people in, but there are valid questions. Rather than simply having a cut-off point, whereby people are told they are not good enough, can we involve training mechanisms that can improve resilience, fitness and so on to allow people to get as good as they need to be to be in the Defence Forces, as opposed to eliminating them on one test or a series of beep tests? Those are the kinds of things we are considering and talking to the Defence Forces about.

I will not say very much about cybersecurity because some of it involves national security issues and so on. I need to be a bit careful. Suffice to say we will invest heavily to increase cybersecurity capacity in the Defence Forces, as I said earlier. That is more than justified and is very much supported by the commission's work.