Mr. Joe Noonan:

On the first point, the example I give is the inability of the Government to do anything with regard to the situation in Gaza without the permission of the European Union. The Senator says we are still sovereign because we decided to join the EU. Respectfully, that is a slight misunderstanding of the concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty is where the power rests to say yes or no. We voluntarily undertook an arrangement where that power would no longer be exclusively with the Irish people. We now see the outworkings of that, in that respect.

As for deployment, this is touched on in another paper but perhaps not sufficiently. I may ask for permission to submit something further on this to the committee. The question is what the best use is of the Irish Permanent Defence Force. There are good reasons not to send soldiers into foreign wars. We all understand that. What, subject to that, can members of the Defence Forces do constructively? There is a huge need for informed, western-educated, military-trained people to work in support of the international institutions like the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court on confronting the evil of impunity. Irish people, including members of the Defence Forces, have huge potential skills untapped to assist those court bodies in investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators who currently enjoy impunity and who operate with impunity. That is unexplored territory that would be something hugely constructive. We have the skills, people and soft power to work within that territory and nobody else is doing it. That would be my last comment.