Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for that. I believe and hope I have the support of most parties in this House, even though sometimes we have a very abrasive political system here in terms of disagreement on policy and so on. I hope the vast majority in this House will support this because it will be for future Governments too and is not just about this Government. I hope we can listen to and take in what the commission has said to us because it is very direct and blunt. There is a need for fundamental modernisation, restructuring and cultural change in the Defence Forces. There is also a need for the Government to look in the mirror and ask whether we are giving the Defence Forces the resources they need to match what we are asking of them in terms of delivery of outputs, services, capacity and so on. The clear answer to that question from the commission is that, no, what we are asking of the Defence Forces versus how we are resourcing them is not matched and that needs to change.

It is a very fundamental core issue in terms of the functioning of the State, namely, basic defence capacity around protecting sovereignty. The context is what we are seeing at the moment in Ukraine and all that flows from that in terms of uncertainty, instability, tension, security considerations and so on. We are likely to see Finland announce today, if it has not already announced it, that it is going to apply for NATO membership. We are likely to see Sweden do the same in the next few days. We are not likely to do that any time soon, but we certainly need to make decisions in regard to our own security and defence arrangements and capacity and resourcing. It is as fundamental as that. Hopefully, we will be able to find a way of getting agreement across Government by the time we bring a memorandum to Government next month.

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