Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I confirm once again that Ireland will remain militarily neutral. We are not going to apply for NATO membership, or membership of any military alliance, nor will we sign up to any mutual defence pact or clause. The Tánaiste has made that very clear on a number of occasions, as have I.

However, the security threats facing our country have changed. There are cybersecurity threats, threats related to international terrorism and espionage, and hybrid threats. We have to think about that as a country. The Tánaiste has established this forum to do exactly that. The kind of things we will do, which we have been doing for some time now, include increasing our budget for defence, co-operating with our EU allies through permanent structured co-operation, PESCO, of which we are a founder and now full member, and co-operating with allies, such as the US, UK and Canada, through the NATO Partnership for Peace process, which we have been a member of for more than 20 years.

The forum will begin this week, on 22 June, in University College Cork, UCC. There will be another meeting on 23 June in University of Galway and on 26 and 27 June in Dublin Castle. The forum is not a binary discussion on neutrality and was never intended to be. As I said, there is no intention to change our policy of military neutrality. It is, however, the fundamental duty of the Government to rise to the challenging global situation we face today. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February last year, which blatantly violated the UN Charter, every country in Europe has examined and re-examined its foreign and security policy and defence policies. It is very positive to see that more than 900 people have already registered to take part over the four days. We have already received 300 written submissions. Eighty people are moderating or speaking on panels over the four days.

They are people with expertise in this area, people who have been involved in peacekeeping, peacebuilding and conflict resolution internationally. Moderators and panellists include many Irish people with on-the-ground experience of UN and EU operations in places like Chad, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Georgia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon. It includes academics from Ireland, as well as Sweden, Finland, Norway, which is a neutral country, Poland, Denmark and the UK. There are senior Irish officials, as well as people from NGOs such as Oxfam and Concern. Of the 18 panel discussions over the four days, only one is about NATO and only two about neutrality.

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