Dr. Tom McDonnell:

The first thing to say about defence budgets is that they represent almost the opposite of a growth strategy because you are buying things that you hope never to use. The goal of defence spending is not to use what you buy so it does not add to the productivity of the economy. It is true that some European countries would benefit from increased defence spending on the European Continent but Ireland is not particularly well placed to do so. If we increase our defence spending, that is money taken away from education or health or raised through higher taxes. That is going to mean lower economic growth in Ireland in the future. You might choose to do so for security reasons but economic growth would be the absolutely last reason a country like Ireland would increase spending on defence. It might make sense for some countries that can export such products but that is not really relevant in the case of Ireland. If we increase our defence spending, we should accept lower economic growth as one of the consequences.