Professor John Maguire:

It is a pleasure to be in contact again with Senator Craughwell. I met him on the first day of the Cork forum and gave him a copy of this document. I really welcome and would love to be in dialogue in any way on these ideas.

I said in my submission that neutrality is very much demeaned, but neutrality is a politically contested concept in any society. This committee has recently had some concerns about the meaning of defence and security, and these are also concepts whose meaning and application are up for grabs. That is what we need to get back into. We were the first neutral and now we are being preached to about what other countries have done because we sat on our hands and closed our mouths when we joined the EU, as we too often have done on the Security Council as well.

Regarding operations abroad, in my submission I point out that they are frightening. The Commission casually mentions space. Are we actually going to have a space force?