Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach
Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals
2:00 am
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
I thank all of the officials for the work they are doing in this area. It is complex. The whole issue has changed dramatically over the last three years. What are now priorities might not have been priorities three or four years ago. To the Department of Finance, we continue to spend just 0.2% of GDP on defence and we have not drawn down SAFE funding. We received only half the requested allocation under the NDP, but announced nearly an 11% budget increase. In the officials' own view and with those funding constraints, how can the Government dramatically scale up the resources available to our Defence Forces? Finland was neutral and has now changed its position. Given Ireland's own position of military neutrality, do the officials believe that we, too, should ensure independent capability that is not reliant on the military capacity of other nations? If so, how could the Government plan to build Ireland's defence technology on an industrial basis towards this objective? On resourcing and acquiring the equipment in Ireland, will the Department outline what proportion of current defence capital expenditure leaves the State and what measures are being taken to increase the level of local industrial participation in defence procurement? For example, given that the Defence Forces have an identified requirement for drones, which could play a significant role across multiple operational areas, what specific steps are being taken to ensure that indigenous Irish businesses can participate in and benefit from the procurement process? Those are three questions I think the Department of Finance officials might be able to deal with.
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