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

I thank the Deputies for their very informed comments on this. One reason why I wanted to be back in the Defence brief was because we had committed to a commission that I expected would make some very telling interventions on the considerations around defence that are necessary and can not be avoided any longer. We have fantastic Defence Forces. They do a brilliant job as peacekeepers and in the roles that we ask of them within the confines of the resources that they have available to them. But it is not enough in today's world to have the level of defence infrastructure that we have available to us when we know that more is needed. This is not about the militarisation of Ireland or anything like that. If we move to level of ambition 2 we will simply move from spending about one third of what other countries our size in Europe spend on defence to spending about half of what they spend on defence.

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