Seán Haughey (Dublin Bay North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations, sobering as they are. Certainly, security and defence issues are rising to the top of the EU agenda. We have found that as a committee in our visits to Brussels and also at the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union, COSAC, meetings. There has been a very definite shift in emphasis towards security and defence issues. There is no doubt that Ukraine has changed everything. I fully accept that. It is important that we support Ukraine for as long as it takes. I will opt for that option. I did not realise there was a difference between until Ukraine wins or for as long as it takes but apparently there is. Initially, the EU was a peace project set up after the Second World War. I see the change coming because of the war in Ukraine and the need to re-evaluate.

A couple of questions, first on the consultative forum on international security policy, which reported last year. We have a new definition of Ireland's traditional policy of military neutrality where it came up with the proposal that we are politically aligned and militarily non-aligned. Arising from that, there were moves to discard the triple lock. Does the professor think that forum did anything to help in the debate he says we need to have? I agree with him on that. I am not sure the forum gave much attention to EU matters, which is what we are discussing today. I would be interested in his take on that.

If I can bring him back to the role of the UK again, what arrangements are in place at the moment for EU-UK security and defence co-operation, if any? I refer to this famous deal with the RAF, namely, the long-standing arrangement to monitor Irish skies for suspicious aircraft going back to 1952. What do we know about that? The Minister for Defence, Deputy Micheál Martin, is not giving any detail of that. What does that say?