Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and for his consistency in highlighting it, and for his good memory of the significant meeting we had three years ago today at the Grand Parade in terms of the Defence Forces. I take his point more generally that there is clearly a need to upgrade significantly and improve resources and capability in respect of our Defence Forces. We need not just to maintain sufficient military capability but add to and strengthen it.

The Government wanted to get the balance right and have a proper researched approach to this. For that reason, as the Deputy will know, the programme for Government committed to the establishment of an independent Commission on the Defence Forces. That commission was established within the first six months of the Government and its report was published in February.

The report is a very significant body of work amounting to over 180 pages. It had a very wide process of consultation with nearly 500 public submissions. The commission met a wide stakeholder group, conducted site visits across a large number of military locations around the country and met with more than 1,000 Defence Forces members and their representative associations. As the Deputy knows, the report proposes very significant changes for the Defence Forces and covers high-level Defence Forces structures, defence capabilities, organisation, culture and human resources, the Reserve Defence Force, RDF, and above all funding.

There are three indicative levels of ambition. Level of ambition one represents current capability. Level of ambition two represents enhanced capabilities, which would involve building on current capability to address specific priority gaps in our ability to deal with an assault on Irish sovereignty and serve in high-intensity peace support, crisis management and humanitarian relief operations overseas. This would involve a significant defence funding increase of €500 million per annum above current defence spending. Level of ambition three would involve developing full-spectrum defence capabilities to protect Ireland and its people comparable to similar-sized countries in Europe. The report sets out costings of approximately €3 billion per annum for this.

These are, therefore, very significant recommendations with very significant implications, particularly in respect of expenditure. There have been interdepartmental consultations. The Minister for Defence will bring forward a memo to Government in June in respect of that consultation between Departments and in respect of the recommendations with a view to the Government making decisions then within a timeline as to how we would enhance and strengthen our overall capabilities.

We also accept that in the modern era, security challenges are such that they cannot be met individually on your own in the sense that we are part of the United Nations and of European Union security and defence discussions and the strategic compass in particular, which provides a political and strategic direction for EU security and defence policy for the next ten years.

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