Mr. Kieran Brennan:

To add to that, the framework for choosing to participate is a Government or policy decision and the military's role in all of this is to operationalise that policy decision. The missions the Defence Forces have undertaken since 1958 have been Government-directed and then operated by the Defence Forces. There was one mission to Macedonia early in the noughties in which Ireland were interesting in participating and it was vetoed by the Chinese Government. That was the only one that I know we were interested in going to but because of that veto we could not go.