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

The White Paper on Defence, which was approved by the Government in July 2015, resulted from a comprehensive examination of defence requirements. It provides the defence policy framework for the period up to 2025. This policy framework is designed to be flexible and responsive given the dynamic nature of the security environment and enables the defence organisation to be adaptive to changing circumstances and to use resources as efficiently as possible.

Within this context, the White Paper contains the Government's decision to put in place a fixed cycle of defence reviews. The first such review, the White Paper update, was completed in 2019. While the update acknowledged challenges in certain areas, it affirmed the fundamentals of our approach to defence policy that were set out when the White Paper was approved in 2015. The next step in the fixed cycle review process is a strategic defence review.

The establishment of a Commission on the Defence Forces was set out in the programme for Government and was a key priority for me. In July, the Government approved funding increases to reach a defence budget of €1.5 billion by 2028 at January 2022 prices, and a high-level action plan for the report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. One of the early actions identified in the high-level action plan is the commencement of a strategic defence review. Officials in my Department are working with the military authorities with a view to progressing this action.

The Deputy is asking about the international environment for defence and security, which has changed fundamentally in the past eight or nine months. We need to be responding to that, as every country needs to be, and we are. We are fortunate to have had a commission which had done an awful lot of the ground work for us and made independent recommendations to the Government about the level of funding we need and the level of capacity investment that will be needed in the coming six years. I am determined that we will not only meet those targets but surpass them. By 2028, the debate on defence in Ireland needs to have moved on. We need to see future governments confident in making a decision to move well beyond level of ambition 2 in terms of our capacity in order for us to be a credible international actor as a non-militarily aligned country that has the capacity to deal with its own sovereignty protection issues and can also be a proactive peacekeeper in parts of the world that are experiencing challenging environments, particularly through Chapter VII missions. That will require a significant increase in capacity, investment and equipment in the coming five or six years.

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