Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

There are other situations where a country will not be able to deploy, not just because it is a political imperative. Some countries have baggage such as a colonial past and will not want to send soldiers into a particular region. That is an imperative which does not apply to us and we should not always think of ourselves as the non-participant. As that is the reality in multinational battle groups, a situation will often arise where one or more of the participants for some reason or other, because of the political imperative, the legal imperative or the historical baggage, will not be able to deploy. All multinational battle groups will have an in-built redundancy to provide for that situation. In other words, they will have substitutes to call up. This is part of the organisation of multinational battle groups. That is the way it will operate in practice. That is as clear as I can make it.

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