Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of Deputy Lawless, I thank the Taoiseach for his response regarding the national risk assessment. The assessment began in 2014, there was another in 2019 and the most recent one was deferred.

From my assessment, I understand that the level of spending in Ireland on defence in 2019 was 0.2% of GDP. By my calculations, that is far too low, even by the standards of any comparable neutral country. In a recent budget there was a bigger annual increase for the military pensions than there was for day-to-day defence expenditure. Could the Taoiseach have this examined, perhaps by reference to other similar neutral countries for instance, Finland, Sweden and Austria? It is an important issue and we need to take account of it. Given that the assessment has not been done yet, as we are going to head into a new cycle it is important that we go in with a view to spending more to ensure the outcome is better.

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