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

I ask Deputy Brady to listen because people need to know the truth here, rather than turning this into some debate around the creation of a European army, which is what the Deputy's party seems to do every time there is a debate on this issue. There is absolutely no move towards a European army or Irish support for one or any political party in Ireland looking to support one. Could the Deputy stop trying to misinform people to make party political points? We should be beyond that, given the seriousness of security debates at the moment in the European Union. What I am trying to do as Minister for Defence, and what I have an obligation to do, is to ensure that our Defence Forces are trained to an international standard that we can stand over. That standard, right across the EU for NATO members and non-NATO members, is the NATO standard. The point is if we are training with, on peacekeeping missions with, or responding to an emergency with other countries in the EU with which we work all the time, we understand how to use similar equipment and have similar training skill sets, capacity and so on. Just because we operate to NATO standards does not mean that we are on a stepping stone to NATO membership. We have been operating on or trying to reach NATO standards for many years now. To try to distort that into something that it is not, given the seriousness of defence right now is just irresponsible. I am sorry if I am pushing back but that is the position.

The Deputy has chosen to introduce that element into this discussion unfortunately. We are not talking about a European army here or a defence union either. The Deputy can quote Josep Borrell if he wants or Federica Mogherini if he wants to. Incidentally, Josep Borrell is not a member of the EPP. Deputy Brady seems to be linking the two. He is trying to ensure that the EU has the capacity to respond to crises if needs be and to ensure that countries in the EU which want to work together to build capacity in security and defence can do so. What we are choosing to do here and what we are asking for support for is that Ireland would work with other countries to look at issues such as cyberthreats and to make sure that we have the best protections and infrastructure that we can put in place by learning from other countries and working with them to ensure that if we have to deploy, if Ireland wants to be part of deploying a response to a natural disaster somewhere - mass flooding, an earthquake or tsunami or a post-conflict situation - and if Ireland chooses to be part of a rapid response to that, that Ireland would have trained with other countries that will help us respond to save lives. That, somehow, is supposed to be linked to the creation of a European army. We want to try to double our Army Ranger wing in size over time because it is justified. There is an idea that our special forces training with other countries, specifically in first aid and medical provision in complex, difficult, dangerous operations, is a bad thing because it is somehow linked to PESCO which, in some people's minds is really about the creation of a European army, when it is not. The core issue is that these are all voluntary. If we were being sucked into this, we would not be here debating it. I am effectively asking for support and permission because I think, on the back of the recommendation from our Defence Forces, that our Defence Forces would benefit from these things in terms of being better equipped, better trained, safer in the field and it allowing us more flexibility in terms of collective partnerships. Every time we send our Defence Forces abroad, we are partnering with another country. We are not living in isolation here where we set our own standards militarily and ignore everything going on around us. Every time we send a rotation out to UNIFIL, UNDOF, to Mali or other parts of the world, it is with other countries with which we need to be interoperable. That is predominantly how I see PESCO. It is true that some other countries will describe and see PESCO differently. They will choose to be part of other PESCO projects that we will not choose to be part of to build capacity in other areas. I accept that point. But the whole point of PESCO is that it is designed to accommodate countries like Ireland, Cyprus, Austria and Sweden and Finland, the latter two of which were not members of NATO until now and would not have been were it not for Russian aggression. Looking at those countries, Austria, Finland, Cyprus and Sweden, they are all involved in between five and ten PESCO projects. They are all militarily non-aligned too, or at least they have been until recently. I want to reassure people listening that this is not undermining Irish neutrality or a journey to some kind of European army. It is about capacity and voluntarily responding to training and capacity improvement opportunities that other countries are buying into as well. In all of these, we have chosen to be an observer first, so we are cautious because of some of the issues the Deputy raised and the perceptions around it. In all these, we choose to be an observer first and the military advice to me is that we should move now from observer status into full participation because we will benefit from that. And we can choose to leave whenever we want if we decide that it is no longer appropriate for us. That does not sound like what the Deputy described in terms of the origins of PESCO.