Professor Ben Tonra:

I will take the top and tail of those questions. In terms of the tail, interoperability is not the issue. NATO has set the standards across Europe and those are the standards all NATO states work to. Those are the standards to which Ukraine works to and indeed the standard Ireland operates to through NATO's Partnership for Peace, so that is not an issue any longer. Therefore, of all of the Irish ammunition, what we could send could be used if we chose to send it and the only reason we do not send it is due to a line in the programme for Government.

With respect to neutrality, if there is one document I would look forward to more than the MOU on the RAF it would be the Department of Foreign Affairs document on neutrality that is coming out, as the Senator told me now. Let us start with first principles. Neutrality is not taking sides in other people's disputes. It is the moral equivalent of walking past a burning building and saying, "That's not my problem." Ireland has been neutral once, during the Second World War, where we did not take sides in that dispute. We could have a whole other conversation about what we did and did not do and what it really meant but formally we were neutral, just like Sweden. Sweden's neutrality was compromised as well, but it was neutral.

Since the Second World War, however, Ireland has never been politically neutral on anything, and I am glad of that. Ireland has taken a position. It has applied its values and its interests to whatever dispute and international controversy. Ireland has always taken a position and it is to the credit of Irish foreign policy makers through the decades that it always has. Forgive me, but the consultative forum did not invent the notion of political alignment and military neutrality.

The definition of neutrality then is the problem because what we have in this country is a debate about people who do not agree on the definition they are talking about. This to my experience, as recently as last night, results in people shouting at one another about neutrality when they are talking about something completely different. The Government, and this is not just this Government but all Irish governments stretching back, has traditionally defined Irish military neutrality as non-membership of a security alliance. I am very sorry to say that is nobody else's definition of neutrality - nobody's - because that is not the status of being neutral. Using that rubric the People's Republic of China is neutral. It is not. Therefore, that is the Government's definition.

Those who are very passionate about neutrality put a lot of other things on top of that. They talk about an anti-colonial policy, an anti-imperial policy, a pro-peace policy, a pro-stability and a pro-development policy, but none of those things are about neutrality. In fact, they are the antithesis of neutrality because they are about taking sides and deciding who the bad guys and the good guys are. That is not neutrality. Again, there is a dialogue of people shouting at each other about a definition which does not apply.

I will make a prediction. What we will see from the Department of Foreign Affairs will be a document that will centre on non-membership of a security alliance and then add all of the bells and whistles in the world. It will be like a Christmas tree. Our neutrality means we are good people and we provide development aid. We are promoters of human rights and gender rights, and are in favour of peace and peacemaking, and we are in favour and in favour and in favour. None of that has anything to do with neutrality bar one issue, and Senator Craughwell can ask me about it. He can pick any of those issues, any of those Christmas lights, that the Department of Foreign Affairs will put on its memorandum to him. Take any one of those Christmas lights and I will find a NATO member state that does it more and does it better, whether it is development, peacekeeping, human rights, gender rights, global justice, diplomacy, etc. We have convinced ourselves that Irish neutrality is a thing but it is nobody else's thing and it is not neutrality.