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

I am glad that Deputy Berry has been as positive about these projects as he has because I have a great deal of respect for his own experience within the Defence Forces and indeed within the Army Ranger Wing, which is part of this package. We need to see partnership as a positive thing when it comes to defence not as a risk to our independence, our sovereignty or our neutrality. There are, of course, parameters to that and I completely accept that but it is the norm for European countries to train and compete together. Our Army Ranger Wing tends to do very well in international competitions with special forces from other countries, including some NATO countries in respect of the standards it sets. We need to maintain that and ensure that the equipment we are using, our capacity and skill set can then be turned into a partnership when called upon to make an intervention.

Deputy Brady referred to Josep Borrel talking about the need for defence capacity, which he did. One of the things in the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence - which is what all of the EU countries have agreed and is the policy template for taking forward common security and defence issues across the EU for the next decade - is that there would be a rapid response capacity. That is, that the EU could respond if there was a massive tragedy in north Africa that needed an EU response because it is in our neighbourhood where, if we needed to make an intervention to save people in the case of a natural disaster, a post-conflict situation, or whatever, that we would have the actual capacity to do that.