Dr. Scott Fitzsimmons:

Deputy Howlin asked a variety of really interesting questions. I thank him very much for them. The first question that was posed to both of us, if I recall correctly, was that relating to defence spending for Ireland versus being part of an alliance. They can be treated as separate issues in the sense that regardless of whether Ireland would seriously consider making a formal commitment to being part of an alliance, whether this is through purely sticking with the European Union in a common defence relationship or joining NATO, it needs to decide what it wants to do in terms of tackling defence and security issues. Part of that set of decisions relates to how much it wants to spend on national defence.

I stated earlier that any discussion of changing our alignment policy should happen after we decide how much we want to do and what we want to do as a country in terms of defence and security. What tasks are beyond what we would like to do? What sets of tasks are within the realm of possibility for us, as a country? Then, we can take that knowledge and have an informed discussion with potential allies. We can say "Here is how we feel we would slot into these long-standing agreements". Unless we have the first part of the debate beforehand, we are more likely to sign up to things that we might not ultimately be comfortable with.

In the context of how much we should spend, I should perhaps have clarified that while I would like to see a considerable increase in defence spending, I do not expect and do not encourage that to happen immediately. This is because whenever any organisation is provided with a considerable increase in resources, it will very likely not know what to do with all those resources in the short term. For example, if an organisation is given an annual budget that is suddenly three times the level of what it is accustomed to, it will very likely be tempted to just spend the money as quickly as it can. There is a sort of a general bureaucratic incentive there, because if you do not spend the money, then it looks like you do not need it. Then, next year, your allocation is likely to be cut. A gradual build-up over the course of a decade or more would be my preferred approach.

When it comes to questions such as the kind of equipment to purchase, including jet fighter aircraft, we must consider whether we should purchase or lease. It is great that the Deputy brought up the example of leasing aircraft. It is not like the question of going to buy a car. A car is a fairly sizeable purchase for most people, but it is not a multi-decade commitment, like perhaps purchasing a fleet of fighter planes or a fleet of more capable ships would be, given all the maintenance contracts and things that go with that. Therefore, going slowly and being incremental is the best approach for us as a country as we move towards greater defence spending.

Likewise, if and when we increase the size of our Defence Forces, I would say as a general target we should have 10,000 people in the Army and approximately 1,500 in our Naval Service and Air Corps. That would be a reasonable target and would sum to 13,000 total, plus the Reserve Defence Force. That should and will inevitably happen slowly. New recruiting campaigns need to be designed so they are attractive to contemporary Irish men and women. Right now we are finding that a career in our armed forces is not particularly attractive because it is difficult to recruit in the first place and because people are leaving much earlier than we would like. We need to figure out the right set of incentives, many of which will simply be in the form of greater compensation and benefits for people to consider this as a career. That is the only way we will be able to grow the Defence Forces.

There is a question as to whether we can afford any of this. In some ways, that is beyond my area of expertise, because it comes down to the finances of the Government. Defence spending is just one of many critically important areas. We have a variety of domestic issue areas for which I think an equally strong case can be made because they are deserving of increased funding. With this being said, every month or so reports appear that say that we are collecting more taxes than ever and that we are going to enjoy considerable surpluses. While I would always favour spending our money responsibly, it seems like we are doing better at least for the moment and will do for the foreseeable future than we have done for some time. This is a more opportune time than perhaps any other during the past 15 years or so to consider major new commitments.

All of this is to ensure that Ireland can do two fundamental things, the first of which is to deter attacks against us and make ourselves seem too difficult to attack. This is somewhat like the Finnish approach, although I do not think we necessarily need to spend as much as Finland has done historically. I do not think the threat to Ireland is equal to the threat to Finland. Russia poses a particular threat to Ireland and could act on the potential to attack us at fairly short notice. Yet, luckily, we do not share a border with Russia. That is one of the benefits of being an island nation. Again, I still feel we need to be able to deter attacks against us.

Even though our alliance commitments are quite one-sided, I do feel we can count on the UK, the European Union and, quite possibly, the United States and Canada to defend us in the event that we were attacked. What Ireland needs in the event that it is attacked is the ability to hold off an attacker just long enough for reinforcements to arrive from other countries. If we were invaded another country - although I am not saying that this is a particularly likely probability - we would need to be able to defend ourselves for long enough that our country would still exist as a political entity and as a free, democratic country and to allow reinforcements to show up. We can reflect on what has occurred in Ukraine over the past year and a half or so. If Kyiv had fallen in the first few weeks, it would have been over. None of the assistance that the European Union, the United States, Canada and various other countries had provided would have been provided because there would have been nothing to save.

We need the ability to at least protect ourselves long enough for assistance to arrive from outside.

This takes me to my final point, which is that one of the benefits of being more open in the context of alliance commitments is that it is considerably less expensive to defend ourselves than if we want to do so all on our own. If we were to behave as a truly military country and say that no one owes us anything and we do not owe anything to anyone else, that would require a huge increase in defence spending for us to realistically be able to protect ourselves and take on and aggressor all by ourselves and not receive assistance. That is a needless cost. The general benefit of being part of an alliance for a relatively small country like ourselves is that we can rely on much larger countries with a much larger tax base to share a disproportionate size of the burden for us. That is a responsible approach. That does not mean committing to what we might call expeditionary wars. We might even say, if we wanted to be political about it, unnecessary wars in which some of our allies may choose to participate. We can say that our role is to defend ourselves, look after the north-west corner of Europe, be the eyes and ears and provide a relatively limited deterrent ability and their role is to come save us in the event that we get attacked. That is a commitment the members of the European Union and NATO, which, of course, have quite considerable crossover at this point, would be very happy with. There would be no expectation that we take part in offensive combat operations in other countries, not that we could make a decisive contribution anyway under any realistic scenario as a relatively small country.