Mr. Eoin Miche?l McNamara:

Maybe Deputy Carthy misread some of the subtlety in my statement. He talks about academics not suffering the consequences. I am an early career academic, and I certainly suffered the consequences of the banking crisis here in Ireland when I graduated from university. As I mentioned in my statement, it has left a very lasting impact on me. All my friends emigrated. I emigrated. Some came back. I put down roots abroad and I am not back yet, apart from some cameo appearances like the one here today. I know all about the consequences of not listening to good advice. There were very good economic advisers from the academic community out there. I will not go into any names, but I am sure they will be familiar to members if I mention them.

On doing nothing and remaining defenceless, and whether this has some sort of deterrent effect, my response is "No". This is why Finland joined an alliance. This is why Sweden will join and this is why most European states are members of NATO. It is because collective defence deters aggression. Even co-operation, while staying outside alliances, creates links, co-operation and military capacity and that raises the costs for aggression. We have seen what aggressors like Vladimir Putin is very capable of; and the incredible atrocities that I did not think I would see in Europe in my lifetime, happening in Ukraine.

As Dr. Fitzsimmons mentioned, no one dislikes us, but Russia and China in different hybrid subversion ways, either military or civilian, can exploit our vulnerability to strike at the European Union or the wider transatlantic economic community and network and to strike at the United Kingdom. This is becoming very tempting and very attractive to them as the global security situation deteriorates. We are seeing this in Ireland with airspace violations. We are seeing it in our waters with the Russian naval manoeuvres. We have seen it with the cyberattacks. These scares are getting more and more frequent. That is a sign that things are getting more and more questionable, vis-à-visthe security situation around Ireland.

The Deputy's point about the honest broker is a good one. I think we need to be careful here in Ireland that we do not inflate our own self image and we do not go down the track of basing policy on navel-gazing. We do play a very good role in UN peacekeeping. We must remember of course that UN peacekeeping missions are very well reimbursed compared with EU missions and NATO missions, so we get some of the costs back from the UN as well. That is not really raised a lot in Ireland. We can focus on that. Other EU countries, because of their commitments, focus on EU missions and NATO missions, as well as UN missions. Because of our choices we only focus on one. We are definitely good at peacekeeping. We are respected there. I would like to flag, however, some of the issues in the Defence Forces reported in the independent review group, IRG, report, and some of the lack of investment. I wrote an article for the Royal United Services Institute, which members can read, just last week or two weeks ago. These issues we are seeing in the Defence Forces also weaken our capacity to engage in peacekeeping. In the 1980s we could field a full battalion in Lebanon, now we are fielding essentially half a battalion and we need to force generate with countries that are NATO members. We were in with Finland and Estonia, which were contributing to a joint battalion with us in Lebanon. Now it is Poland and the Czech Republic with some soldiers from Malta. With the exception of Malta – Finland was not a NATO country at the time – all these countries are NATO countries. It does not harm their reputation in peacekeeping as well. I will bring members back to the 1990s when Kofi Annan-----