Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta Callaghan as an gceist. SAFE, which stands for Security Action for Europe, is an EU instrument designed to provide member states with up to €150 billion of loans backed by the EU budget to provide financial assistance to member states to support their urgent public investments in defence, increase production capacity, improve the availability of defence products and address capability gaps. Ireland supported the adoption of the SAFE instrument and is availing of possibilities available under the SAFE regulation which will allow our country to realise our ambition more quickly and more efficiently. I am determined to provide for the development of a full spectrum of Defence Forces capabilities that will bring Ireland in line with other similar-sized European countries when it comes to defence and security. The Government continues to invest significantly in defence through our national budget. We saw an increase in capital funding to €1.7 billion. The funding represents an increase of 55% on the figure for the previous five years or €600 million. This increase in funding will be utilised to address long-standing capability gaps, modernise core infrastructure needs and support the delivery of defence responsibilities.

In the first instance, I have agreed that the Department of Defence should leverage the common procurement opportunities offered under the SAFE regulation as much as possible, so we have decided to opt in to the common procuring under that regulation. By procuring jointly Ireland can achieve lower prices, quite frankly, than we could if we were procuring alone and we will not be competing against other member states for limited resources and we should be able to access additional capabilities more quickly. That is part 1 of the regulation. With part 2, the question is whether we want to draw down loans under the funding mechanism. A decision was taken in conjunction with the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation not to draw down funding via the loan mechanism at this time. However, I have engaged and I expect a second round of calls to be made about that, so we do not rule that out at all. We have prioritised very significantly increasing our capital and current budgets for defence. That is where we are putting our initial resources. We are using the procurement mechanism to jointly procure while keeping the option open to opt in to a loan or funding mechanism at a future date.

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