Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

I know what I am about to speak about is something the Deputy Leader cares dearly about, given her constituency. I know her commitment to the Defence Forces and to all things defence. I am sure that she is as outraged as I am about the Financial Times article, "How Ireland became the weak spot in Europe's defences". We have been talking about defence in this Chamber for ten years. For ten years I have been constantly talking about defence, and where are we? We are getting worse and worse. We have people talking about the massive increase in the defence budget. There is no massive increase in the defence budget. I will come here with genuine figures in the not-too-distant future, because I have the figures going back to 2022, on how the defence budget has changed. In some years it regressed rather than increased. That is deeply worrying. I know the Deputy Leader engages with Defence Forces people all of the time and so do I, and that tends to be a bubble you are within. What really bothers me is that, now, ordinary members of the public are speaking to me. Neighbours are stopping me to ask me what is going on with defence, what is happening and are we at risk. They will equally throw in the neutrality thing and question the triple lock and all of these things. The key issue is that people feel the State is vulnerable. How right they are. If you sever one of the electricity interconnectors between the UK and us, people will lose power and likely lose their lives because hospitals will run out of electricity. If you damage the gas connectivity, what will that do to the country? In fairness to the flag officer in the navy, he has seen green shoots and a lot of recruitment. We met them recently in Grangegorman. However, there needs to be a more open debate on security, defence and where we are going. We need to counter the article in the Financial Times. It made the front page of the Financial Times in the United States. Leaving aside our European brothers and sisters and our American brothers and sisters, the citizens of the State themselves are now ahead of Government thinking when it comes to defence and security. I will have more to say on this, as I know the Deputy Leader knows I will, in the coming days and weeks.