Dr. Edward Burke:

I worked in the UK until 2022 and suffered a lot of general slander about my profession regarding experts and academics. I would not like to see that culture recreated in my own country. In the same way as I really admire all of the committee members for going into politics, which is extremely difficult in our contemporary time, we need to be very careful about language and assertions when it comes to my profession, because once one loses that confidence, it is gone and it is very hard for our universities to get it back. That is why I urge caution.

With regards to neutrality, I will put my cards on the table. Ireland is an aligned country. We do not have treaty obligations that ensure we will automatically go to war for our partners or allies. We are not a member of NATO and there is no prospect of us being a member of NATO, but we are aligned to the European Union. If one talks to people in Switzerland about why they could not join the European Union, it is because they have the view that their neutrality is still in play, albeit just about. They believe that joining the United Nations in 2002 seriously dented their neutrality in terms of the understanding of neutrality under the Hague Convention, which is complete non-alignment.

That is my view on the matter. It is obviously not the Government's view. It does not mean we are going to join NATO any time soon, but it means we have European Union obligations. We are involved in EU missions in Ukraine, for example, and we are stating very clearly that we are politically not neutral within the EU context. Defence and military strategy flows from policies. If I say that here is my policy but my strategy is completely different, that is incoherent. I do not think many other EU member states, particularly central and eastern European ones, understand that. It is not clear to them.

We need an absolute focus on our defence capabilities. I welcome the committee's attention to that. The position of the Naval Service within the wider Defence Forces is completely untenable. As an island country, this should have been recognised a very long time ago. We could reconfigure the Defence Forces to a maritime role, which would make a lot of strategic sense in terms national defence and would perhaps include marines as well as a much greater maritime special forces and maritime Air Corps capability. There is a logic to that. I welcome the committee's future focus on this area. Many of our debates about defence in Ireland are quite lofty. These are important issues but we need to do both at the same time. We need to have this conversation, but I look forward to the committee digging into a maritime security strategy and capabilities and making sure that some of the recommendations of the Commission on the Defence Forces - I will let the committee decide which ones it strongly advocates on behalf of - are implemented as quickly as possible.