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

In order for military forces to be effective, they need to have equipment. We are increasing our budgets, including our capital spend, on defence, which is about increasing capacity. Deputy Gannon and others in this Chamber will rightly ask me the hard questions on the capacity gaps we have in our Defence Forces today. To protect our sovereign territory and monitor essential infrastructure, we need to increase capacity and move to level of ambition 2, which is what the Commission on the Defence Forces has essentially asked the Government to do. To do that we need to have equipment and technology and there are industries that provide that. We need to have an open and transparent discussion on who they are, where they are and how we source product. Having conferences such as the one later today is nothing more than that. I do not accept the interpretation the Deputy is putting on it that an arms industry conference is happening in Dublin later today. Plenty of companies in Ireland are providing technology, know-how and research in the military space. There is nothing wrong with that. We need to ensure that Ireland has access to modern technology to ensure we can improve our capacity and respond to the kinds of threats and challenges that our military will face in the future.

I understand Deputy Griffin's sentiments. I assure him that we do not have large stocks sitting there. We have some stocks but they are pretty limited. I do not want to allow the impression to go from here that we have significant stocks of armaments that are going out of date while Ukrainian soldiers desperately need more ammunition that we could provide to them. We have pretty tight and limited stocks in that space. They are used for training purposes and for our operations at home and overseas. We do not have the large stocks that many other countries have.

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