This was a three month course on live fire. All of the skills I picked up there, I brought back into the Irish Defence Forces. We have never had a single live fire fatality in the Defence Forces as a result because of the excellent skills we are picking up abroad, bringing back and ploughing into our own organisation here.

I have done multiple medical courses to make me a better doctor and multiple courses in hostage rescue which made me a better operator as well. I totally see the value of these courses, workshops and this international training and it protects Ireland more than anything else. It gives us the skills because we do not have the expertise on the island at the moment. Because of our history, thankfully, we have not been involved in major conflicts. Other countries have and have learned many hard lessons. We have the opportunity to pick up these lessons and not to repeat the mistakes that they made.

On the four projects being selected, I believe they have been very carefully chosen, which I acknowledge. The first of these is on cybersecurity and we know what happened in the HSE last year. It could happen again next year and even tonight with our national grid or our transport infrastructure. We need to have the expertise to be able to protect ourselves. That is all about getting information and bringing it back.

Second, from a special forces and medical point of view, I would be concerned about the medical backup for the Defence Forces at the moment. We have been very fortunate that we have not experienced any major casualties overseas so we have not been tested. This is an opportunity where, for example, if there is a hostage situation in Dublin airport if an aircraft is hijacked, and if the Army Ranger Wing has to go in and take that aircraft down, that it knows it has the edge on the terrorists and that it has the best medical backup in equipment, knowledge and expertise that it needs.

The disaster relief project is of great importance for our Engineer Corps and for Ireland also. We know climate change is coming down the tracks and that flood relief is going to be a big issue. It is very important that our Engineer Corps has the expertise and the equipment on site and available to intervene and look after the public as best as possible in disaster relief, without even mentioning overseas service.

Finally, from a mine clearance point of view, this is very topical in the Black Sea at the moment where there are 20 million tonnes of grain and there are serious discussions going on as to whether there should be an international coalition of the willing to go in with escort vessels to bring merchant vessels out with the grain on board. The Naval Service has almost no expertise in mine clearance and it is very important that it does, particularly in respect of undersea cables etc.

The military are completely in favour of it and I am completely in favour of the projects that have been selected. It is very prudent to move from observer to participant status.

To sum up, politically, we engage beyond this island and diplomatically we engage with our peers abroad, which is even the case from a scientific point of view. It is completely appropriate that our armed forces are able to engage and learn the lessons from abroad and bring them back to this island to make us a better group. There is a phrase going around where the accountant says to the CEO what if we train all of these people and they just leave. The CEO then says what if we do not train them and they stay. That is the situation which the Defence Forces are in at the moment which is that we do not have access to this expertise. We have to go abroad to learn the expertise, bring it back and make our military the best it can possibly be so that in the event of us having to operate independently to protect our own island, we have the capacity to do so. I am totally in favour of these four projects and I look forward to supporting them.