Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, but the Senator drew a correlation between that and the arms industry, which I felt was perhaps a personal interpretation but not quite her words. I wanted to clarify that point. The European Defence Agency has many positive projects. I think there is an acceptance that, as a small island member state, we do not have the capacity to protect our airspace. We rely on the UK to do that. We do not have the capacity to protect our maritime space, which is bigger than our land space. We are a small country. I do not think the public wants us to spend what would be needed to do that on our own. We work with other member states on things like cybersecurity, pooling resources for research, and assisting in search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean as we did with the Italians some years ago. I think there is sometimes a rush to suggest that co-operation on defence issues simply translates to boots on the ground in a war zone. That is not accurate.