Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

Considerable work has been undertaken in the Department and I have been involved in trying to advance some of that. The military authorities have been considering the implications for themselves and trying to predict what challenges their organisations might have to deal with over the next decade. One element of that is an environmental analysis and much of that work will be done internally in the military and in the context of the defence and security environment both nationally and internationally. Considerable knowledge and background information is available. People may make submissions that have a fundamental impact on the direction and shape of the White Paper.

It would be extremely damaging for the process if a Minister or somebody else in a position of authority relating to the White Paper set out narrow parameters within which he or she would constrain any submission that might be made. We need on this occasion to do something similar to what was done in 2000, while learning from the experience of the past ten years; to set out wide parameters and to encourage people to make their submissions in that context but not indicate to people that there are exclusions before the process of consideration commences.

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