Mr. Eoin Miche?l McNamara:

On the French vision, I do not want to upset any of my friends from France, but we need to remember that NATO has been around since 1949. The Common Security and Defence Policy, CSDP, has been around since 1999, which is very young in the development of security institutions. The CSDP was developed because that was the era of expeditionary peace support. That was obviously French led, first in the Balkans and then in the Sahel region in Africa to protect against the myriad risks that could come up through the Mediterranean. We are seeing them now. If there is not stabilisation in the Sahel, then Europe's southern flank is in trouble, as it is currently. I am based in Europe and I know that most European states still see NATO as tried, tested and trusted to an extent way beyond the EU institutions. It also has the power of the United States behind it, which is very important. The United States has capabilities, which Europe does not have, that are essential for the operations we need to run in Europe. Increasingly, these operations are more about territorial defence - especially defence of the EU and NATO eastern flank. When the conversations start getting very serious, most European countries will put their NATO hat on and walk into NATO decision-making rooms and emphasise that environment.

France has been mentioned, but I will finish on this point. I have worked in the Baltic states and networked with a lot of eastern European academics over the past decade. It is mooted in literature on international relations policy that the policy in Europe will see a power shift to the east. In ten to 15 years, Poland's GDP is projected to be larger than that of the United Kingdom. Poland has been playing a key role in the war in Ukraine. The Baltic and Nordic states in the European Union might then want to tuck themselves in under Polish power. The European Union has been run geopolitically on a three power model of France, Germany and the UK, when it was a member. Now NATO and the EU are looking at a five power model in the transatlantic space - the US, the UK, Germany, France and Poland. In my opinion, Ireland never grasped how enlargement changed the European Union. I have been working in that part of the world for a decade, and now it is their time. They have had their time as newcomers inside the European Union. Their economies are rising and they are voicing more of their influence inside the European Union. We need to respond to that in Irish foreign policy. We have a very good place to start. There are large central and eastern European diasporas, split across the central and eastern European region, within Ireland. Our Department of Foreign Affairs should try to look at this and look at this early. It will advantage us by giving us a seat closer to the action as the geopolitical environment in Europe develops. That must be borne in mind.