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

I am listening to Senator Higgins. However, let us not layer in the issues around delegation of command to force commanders with the issues of secondments into international organisations, whether it is the African Union, the European Union, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, or whoever. These are entirely different issues. We have had good debate with a delegation from the Minister around what it means to operate with a force commander. It is good to have had that discussion. However, that is simply doing what we have always done. We are now putting that now into law. The issue the Senator raised could potentially tie a Minister's hands about where they could send someone on secondment or posting outside of the State to any international organisation. If we start linking that to an organisation that has a UN mandate at that point in time, we are into a crazy space of saying that we can only second somebody to, for example, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, if they have a UN mandate at the time.