Professor Ray Murphy:

Unity of command is essential to international forces and because of certain constitutional provisions and provisions in the Defence Act with regard to the exercise of command by permanent members of the Defence Forces, it was necessary to clarify we delegated operational command to non-Irish nationals in the field. We retain national command. In the space of a minute there is no way I can explain exactly what that means but it is important that if forces are being sent abroad - and I support this - that they have to be part of a unified command structure because otherwise they are being invited to participate in something that can be quite chaotic.