Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, I was very proud, as I am sure the Minister of State was, to attend the commissioning of 67 or 68 cadets into the Defence Forces, along with the young Maltese officers who were trained in Ireland. The co-operation with Malta is an example of the way we can work in co-operation with the rest of the world. It was very moving, and one can tell that those young men and women will do us proud. In some cases that might be due to knowing them or their families, but the sense of them as a team together suggested that they will do our country proud, as the Army, the navy and the air force have done over the years.

The cadets swore allegiance to the State, the Constitution and the Republic - as well as to the House, in a way, because it gives the Defences Forces their direction and sets their strategic missions. It gives us such a sense of responsibility that we must get things right and ensure that we do right by them, which includes ensuring we pay them properly. The disorganisation in our armed forces, through the mix-up of battalions and so on a few years ago, must be reversed in order that we get our organisational structures right. More importantly, the average age of those young men and women is 23. Let us consider the next 20 or 30 years when they will fulfil the promise they made yesterday, and the world into which they are going. Any dispassionate assessment of our situation would raise a sense of caution about what is happening in both European and global contexts.

While it is true that we are involved in realpolitik and the larger states have a strong influence, the French President clearly stated that he wants a true European army to handle the Russian threat and reduce our reliance on the US, and the German Chancellor backed him up. Is that how we see ourselves? Is that the strategic military direction we need to take in the world? The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, in his State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, stated, "A strong, competitive and innovative defence industrial base is what will give us strategic autonomy." Are we satisfied that is the strategic direction that will best serve those young officers, soldiers, seamen and women and aviators over the years? Will our buying-in to that sort of vision of a strong industrial base serve them? We live in a world with all sorts of complications involving military technology; the use of drawing technology, which we seem to fete in our European statements; and the advancement of robotics, which create various ethical dilemmas in the use of military force. That is what makes me think we will not serve those officers well if we just buy into that narrative and think it is the future security that will work best for the Irish people, the European people or the wider world.

We have heard it time and again with the launch of the European Defence Fund. European Commission Vice President Jyrki Kaitanen has said the fund will act as a catalyst for a strong European defence industry in developing cutting edge and fully interoperable technologies and equipment. The Minister of State has come to us and told us to fear not, as all we are talking about is interoperability in order that our soldiers can do their best job. Nobody would want to deny them that opportunity. We are not blind or deaf and can speak English and read documents from the Commission and elsewhere. We can read the background analysis of PESCO, and other interoperability mechanisms we are to enter, including NATO partnerships. It is all about increasing military spending on hardware and advancing robotics, drone and other technologies. I do not trust us or, I am afraid to say, Europe to best deploy them in a way that will suit our armed services in the tradition in which they have excelled. I have heard the story of Irish Army officer heroes who stood in a difficult position in a Lebanese village when somebody was about to be beaten up and killed. They stopped it and protected people with the power of a pencil in just having the bravery to stand in a square and say they were writing everything down. They were willing to protect the people concerned by standing as soldiers who were not just bringing in big weapons or technology but bravery and a presence on the ground. In so doing they averted that death. All of the officers I met would fill us with a sense of pride. I have met Irish intelligence officers behind certain operations in which we participated in Africa and they realised there were complexities in European engagements in Africa that required a diplomatic approach, rather than focusing on the industrial military and its technology.

Somebody told me that the American army had learned about what we had done in Liberia when we went to a village to give computers to a local community, thereby winning the hearts of the community we were protecting in order that we could work with them in a really effective way. I have heard of Irish Army bases that were not industrial with a high technology spend but which had open fortifications in a sense. Although they were still secure, they kept the area open in order that there was not a sense of massive walls acting as a break between the Irish Army and the people the soldiers were there to defend. They would not send their big and fancy vehicles along the small country roads in the middle of the rainy season for fear that if they did, local farmers would not be able to use them to get their food to the market, thereby exacerbating a tense position. That is our skill and what we are brilliant at. It is what we bring to peacekeeping.

Unfortunately, in everything I read there is mention of interoperability. In a sense, these status of forces agreements, SOFAs, are a metaphor for interoperability. We are told that with interoperability we could see an average saving of 30% if we were to bring all of our helicopters and drone equipment together. That does not lead to a saving in budgets but rather an expansion. It is very explicit as it is a €500 million increase this year, with a view to having ever-increasing budgets. As I indicated, some people will see this ending with a true European army as an ideal or full interoperability. The agreement between NATO and Europe argues that having a stronger NATO and Europe is mutually reinforcing. I am not too sure we are serving our young men and women if we think that is our particular place in the world today. We are living in a world that is complex and difficult, with the West in decline. As the former UK Prime Minister, Mr. Gordon Brown, said, ten years ago, the West accounted for 60% of economic activity, but that is now down to 40%. Europe will have to manage what will be a relative decline by protecting our civilisation, looking after citizens and ensuring we will manage our borders, although not in a way that will lead to "fortress Europe" or bring massive investment in an industrial armaments base in an attempt to restore or hold on to what we sense we are losing. Europe will be great and we should be great within it when we have a slightly different version of where we are going from here. The young men and women who will serve us would be better served by an Oireachtas that would signal such intent, rather than one that is behind growth in industrial armaments expenditure as the way forward. Although we very much want to look after our soldiers, that is why we cannot agree to the motion. It is part of an overall movement in which the Minister of State seems to be taking the country's armed forces. It is not secure.

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