Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)

Respectfully, I answered the Deputy on one technical point, which is clear. Training people to remove land mines is not taking sides in a war. The national position is that we are not politically neutral; we are militarily neutral. If the Deputy thinks it is taking sides to remove land mines from blowing up women and children, that it is a different interpretation of what we are doing.

Deputy Lawless made the point the triple lock goes back to 2011, when actually it goes back to the 1960 Defence Act. I say that deliberately because it is important to provide clarity.

Deputy Collins managed to make a three-minute contribution to a debate on Ukraine and not mention Ukraine once. This is really important. Other people discussed immigration and tied it to Ukraine. I have no issue with that. People are right to raise issues and points of clarification, as Deputy Healy-Rae did. I respect his right to do so and acknowledge the points he raised, but when people bring up the EU migration pact, which has nothing specifically to do with providing shelter for up to 118,000 Ukrainian refugees, it takes issue with the essence of what we are trying to debate.

Deputy Heneghan raised a number of points requiring a specific response. One was on the need to strengthen our capabilities as a militarily neutral sovereign country. I fully agree with him and that is why the review of the Commission on the Defence Forces laid out three options and the Government is pursuing the second option. There has been a massive increase in resources to our cyberdefence capability. There has been the setting-up of a maritime defence system to make sure those undersea cables can be monitored. We need to acknowledge the requirement for co-operation on defence. That does not mean joining any alliances or anything like that. It is basic common sense that when we talk of cables that serve the entire Continent of Europe from North America, we speak to our neighbours in Europe. That is why we have a memorandum of understanding -----

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