Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Yes, that is true and this adds to that. We have multi-annual funding programmes with the World Food Programme. Interestingly, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine put in place a three-year rolling multi-annual funding programme with the World Food Programme which I think is a really good example of how most countries should do it. Food security, nutrition and the sustainability of food production is one of Ireland's calling cards in terms of international policy and humanitarian assistance and will continue to be. A new agreement was signed last December between Ireland and the World Food Programme which will provide at least €75 million over the next three years. We are doing our bit here and it is important that we state that at a time when there are a lot of other pressures on the Irish Exchequer and so we should, as a country of our resources.

On Turkish intent in north-west Syria, I am concerned that President Erdogan plans to launch further military action in Syria in order to create what Turkey describes as a safe zone. I expressed my concern about President Erdogan's remarks when I met with the Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuolu in June. I called on all parties to exercise restraint in order to avoid any further exacerbation of this already fragile situation and to co-operate in the effort to find a political solution under UN auspices, which alone can bring lasting peace to Syria. We do not want to see the Turkish military crossing the border and effectively cleaning out a buffer strip of what it regards as terrorist groups. It will say that it is about Turkish security but it is not justifiable to cross another country's border to do what it proposes. I had quite a long discussion on that issue and our position is well known.

I want to emphasise something on the strategic compass. We have discussions around threats to neutrality and so on all the time - I get that and I am happy to have these conversations because it is really important that we give people reassurance - but we were very involved in the finalising of the text of the strategic compass and so was Austria. These are countries that are not in NATO; Finland and Sweden were not then applying for NATO membership either. The whole point of the strategic compass is that it gives a direction on the EU common defence and security policy over the next ten years that allows countries that have a very different perspective on military alliances to still be able to work together on a voluntary basis. That is why Ireland is comfortable about getting involved in more Permanent Structured Cooperation, PESCO projects, for example, because we can opt in or out when we want to just like when there are projects and training programmes in the future. However, we should make no mistake, our security in the future will be dependent on collective co-operation, training, partnership and interoperability with lots of other EU countries, learning best practice, making sure we have the best equipment and making sure that we can respond to cyber threats and hybrid threats. Other countries in the EU are our partners and friends. We do not have a formal defence pact with them but we are certainly open to increasing the level of partnership and knowledge-sharing between countries. That is the whole benefit of being in a union. We should not to isolate ourselves because of perceptions around neutrality. That is why it is important for us to be involved in the cyber security centre and the hybrid warfare centre of excellence. That is why it is important that we get involved in what are called battle groups, which we did before. That is effectively groups of countries agreeing to train together to ensure that they are interoperable should they ever choose to go abroad together on peace keeping or peace intervention, a humanitarian mission or whatever. The strategic compass is flexible in how it is written to accommodate Ireland, Austria, Malta, Cyprus and at the time Sweden and Finland. I want to give people reassurance on that.

I will address the commission because people will have questions on it. I look forward to having a much longer and more in depth discussion on it and will be very happy to do that. We have not even launched it yet. We agreed it at Cabinet this morning. We will launch it tomorrow morning at 9.30 a.m. with the party leaders. On a personal level, in a political career, I have been privileged to be in Government for quite a period of time. You really only get about half a dozen opportunities to do something of real significance as a Minister. This, for me, is one of them. It is about as fundamental a decision for the Defence Forces as I think people will ever see an Irish Government make. We are committing to a significant and steady increase in funding for the next six years. We are effectively saying that the benchmark now is what the commission has asked for, namely that we have to get to €1.5 billion of a defence budget. However, we have agreement from the Government that it will be done on the basis of January 2022 pricing, that is, that inflation will be factored in year after year. If, for example, military equipment inflation over the next six years was an average of 4%, which is a conservative estimate given the international spending we will see on security and defence, that would effectively mean that by 2028 we would need to be spending €1.9 billion on defence every year. That means the decision that we made today and making no increase in defence spending between now and 2028 is about €2.7 billion extra expenditure over the next six years. From an Irish perspective, given that we only spend about €1.1 billion a year now, to increase the spend by €800 million by 2028 into the base annually is a very significant statement by the Government in its commitment to expanding, growing and developing the Defence Forces in the way that it needs to happen. As to what that means numerically, the official position is that we are moving from 9,500 to 11,500 in the Permanent Defence Forces. However, given that we have fewer than 8,500 personnel in the Defence Forces now, we need to find a way of adding 3,000 people into the Permanent Defence Forces over the next six years and another 3,000 into the Reserve which needs that to get to the establishment that has been benchmarked.

This means that over six years, there will be a net increase of 6,000 people within our Defence Forces, including both the Permanent Defence Force and the Reserve. Anybody who tells me we are not being ambitious enough in this Government with our decisions needs to have a look at the detail. I do not believe it is possible to deliver something more ambitious than this in terms of numbers, expenditure and the equipment that is being itemised and recommended by the commission to get to level of ambition 2. Anybody who says we should be going to level of ambition 3 needs to read the commission's report. It says that even if we wanted to do that, it probably would take until about 2040 to get there because it is such a dramatic increase in numbers and equipment across all fields. Even if we wanted to do it, we would have to get to level of ambition 2 first in terms of putting a basis and platform in place upon which we can then build. That is what we have committed to doing by 2028.

We have done other things, including making decisions around how we use and increase allowances for people, for which different parties and members of the committee have been calling. That is a positive news story as well. Along with the funding, the structural change this Government decision demands and requests is of a similar scale of ambition. We are talking about completely restructuring the Army, and it is the Army itself that will do it. There will be a completely new leadership structure within the Defence Forces, with a new chief of defence and a new structure for Defence Forces headquarters. Immediately, we are going to set about the recruitment of a head of transformation for the Defence Forces and a head of human resources, both of whom will be civilians. We will also appoint a gender adviser and a head of digital services. There will be new people, new expertise and new thinking. We will also focus on driving a change of culture within the Defence Forces. We all recognise why that is needed.

This is a very big deal and it will take years to deliver. The Government has set a clear course and a level of ambition that will allow the Chief of Staff and his team and the Secretary General of the Department of Defence and her team to set about putting the building blocks in place over the next six to ten years to ensure we have strong, growing and sustainable Defence Forces into the future. Most importantly, it will send a signal to young people, both men and women, that the Defence Forces offer an exciting career option that is rewarding financially as well as in many other ways. I am sorry if this is coming across as a sales pitch. It is a decision for which I have spent a long time preparing and I think it is a really good one from a Defence Forces perspective.

Deputy Brady knows, because we have spoken about it often and will speak about it often in the future, that the Middle East situation is something in which I want to invest a lot of political time between now and the end of the year. If he asking me whether I think the Security Council will recognise what is happening in the occupied territories in the way he described, I would say there is no chance of that happening. The Security Council continues to be deeply divided on this issue. We have a debate there every month and it is a sort of Groundhog Day situation. The same arguments are made and there is often quite a bit of acrimony, difference of opinion and so on. I have committed to working with others, both like-minded states in the Arab world and within the EU, to try to bring forward some new thinking on the Middle East peace process. That is what we will be trying to do in the autumn.

I have spoken about this issue with a number of colleagues in other governments. I hope we will visit the region again in the early autumn to try to progress some of that thinking. I met Professor Michael Lynk when he visited Ireland and I read his report. The one thing I know for sure is that the status quois a recipe for more violence, tragedy and discrimination. We will see another cycle of violence if we do not find a way of changing the political direction in regard to the Middle East peace process and the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.

Deputy Stanton asked about the situation with North Macedonia and Albania, which is increasingly frustrating for the EU. There really is an appetite now to move ahead and accelerate the accession process. Some of the countries in the western Balkans have been waiting nearly 20 years to make any progress. If there are progressive forces in a country fighting and winning elections on the basis of making the necessary changes to reach the thresholds for moving forward the accession agenda and then there is not a positive response from the EU, not only does that delay accession but it potentially undermines the possibility of accession, it undermines the progressive political forces that are trying to achieve it and it creates a vacuum others will fill. I do not want to get too prescriptive in this regard but that is what will happen. As the committee knows, there are issues in regard to North Macedonia and Albania that are preventing progress on accession. France, in particular, has been very active in trying to put a proposal in place that could move the issue forward. We will support any efforts that can find a way forward that treats North Macedonia with respect as a potential EU member state, and likewise for Albania. Those efforts continue.

On energy security, last week, for the first time, the EU imported more energy product, including oil and gas, from the US than it did from Russia. That says a lot. We are now seeing a number of countries, Germany probably being the leading one, looking at quite dramatic contingency plans should Russia decide to switch off the gas or should the EU decide to stop the gas flowing in the autumn. There is little doubt that the war in Ukraine has changed our world view in a way that is not going to be reversed. In response to Russia's aggressive behaviour, countries have shown great unity. Further unity is now required to place energy security, efficiency, savings, diversification and acceleration towards renewables at the heart of a climate and energy policy. Heads of state and government have already agreed to accelerate Europe's decarbonisation and phase out our dependence on Russian oil, gas and coal imports as soon as possible. The EU's green deal and the associated Fit for 55 package represent key tools in this effort. The global energy price crisis has highlighted the danger of an over-reliance on fossil fuel imports and has led many countries to attempt to move away from their dependence on Russian imports.

Some people might say this is all well and good but the question then is what happens next year. The truth is that we are not going to have the offshore wind projects built for next year that we certainly will have by 2030. We are not going to have the solar capacity in place or the liquefied natural gas, LNG, plants operating. This means we must put contingency arrangements in place. Some people seem to be complacent on the basis of the false premise that we do not source much gas at all from Russia. Our gas comes from our own sources off the west coast and also through two gas pipelines from Scotland, with that gas coming from the North Sea, predominantly from Norway, into the UK and on to Ireland. If Russian gas were to be cut off from the EU, the pressure on Norway to provide gas into other EU countries would undoubtedly be very strong. We cannot simply say that Ireland does not import any Russian gas and that means we are fine. That is a complete oversimplification of the reality of where gas prices may be in the autumn and, indeed, the knock-on price consequences for electricity and other carbon-based fuels, which will be significant.

There is a great deal of work going on within the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications to look at contingency plans for the autumn. We have already committed to spending €500 million on buying new turbine facilities that can, if necessary be used at short notice. We will continue to look at contingency plans in that regard.

I take the point regarding the gas pipeline infrastructure off Kinsale. There have been proposals in the past to use that natural storage facility as a gas storage facility. There are also other proposals in respect of floating LNG terminals and so on. We need to be open to all of those ideas. Ultimately, however, it is not my area of responsibility, so I do not want to over-commit on anything. The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications is looking at energy security issues as well as the shift away from carbon-based fuels and the need for sustainability and emissions reductions.