Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise if some of this has been dealt with. Professor Tonra spoke about two things, including security clearance. I do not expect Ireland to have a CIA and I certainly do not expect it to have a whole pile of James Bonds going around the place. However, an ability to analyse information and to be able to put the correct information in front of Government and Ministers is obviously vital. The world has changed absolutely. Globalisation has been put on its head. We did have a status quo regarding mutually-assured destruction during the Cold War. There was not that much wiggle room.

Our two witnesses are academics and they might know the answer to this question as I cannot find where I saw this. Was there at one stage a US foreign policy proposal, from a defence point of view, that you could fight a war without engaging nukes? I do not mean a small element, but if you took on the Russians, you would do it with everything bar nuclear weapons and that someone like Eisenhower said that was grand, but when you start to lose, that would go out the window? However, Vladimir Putin has thrown that on its head to a degree. That is just for my own information.

On some level, I get what the Chair said on neutrality. I understand the way the Chair provided a caveat for what he said. Sometimes I prefer the idea of non-aligned and I suppose that does not rule out that we would not make a decision on what we would do. If we are looking at a worst-case scenario at some stage, I suppose that changes everything. Particularly coming from where I am coming from, we would have always had an issue regarding British involvement here and abroad, and American involvement in South and Central America, Cuba and wherever, even during the Cold War when they could not differentiate between eastern European communism and poor people who just wanted a better life. At times, America has been stupid in how it has operated and that is before we talk about Palestine.

However, we are in a world of neocolonialism. We have the Russians and the Chinese. We have game-play. We have whatever is going on in Georgia at this point. We have all that. I suppose we are in the age of the tech giants providing something because there are actors that weaponise this but the tech sector provides something that is absolutely weaponised if anyone wants to put negative messages out there or wants to just supercharge them, which we have seen. We have no shortage of bad actors in every state who will throw it out there, and it is easy enough then to put steroids on it. It is a very different world. I am not entirely sure what the actions should be.

What was spoken about regarding overseas aid is the real deal even if we are talking about migration or these other issues. Even if we are talking about countries in Africa that are not necessarily absolutely war-torn, their economies are not necessarily great. It has been put to me that with overseas aid, we have facilitated the education of a huge number of people and of populations that are growing but that they will live in crap economies until we change the nature of that and until less is taken out in debt than is put in and there is a fairer system. That is also accepting that you have a whole pile of governments that are not necessarily sound regarding corruption. Until you get that piece together, you will be constantly be dealing with this and with destabilisation. If I am going to give out about the Russians and the Chinese, I have to give out about the western world and what it has done in Syria, Iraq and across the board. You could put that piece together very quickly. I thought it was interesting where the meeting went with the overseas aid. If the witnesses can remember the 14 different questions I asked, I will be impressed.