John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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43. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the progress that has been made to date on the strategic defence review; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5161/23]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The White Paper on Defence Published in 2015 set out the Government intention to put in place a new fixed cycle of defence reviews.  Such reviews are common practice internationally and give reassurance that policy remains up to date and relevant to changing future circumstances.

The White Paper set out that every three years there will be a White Paper update that would consider progress made up to that time and consider any revisions required with each alternate three-year review in the cycle being more comprehensive in nature and to be styled a Strategic Defence Review.  This new review process will also inform strategy statement preparation.

The first of these reviews, the White Paper Update was published in 2019.  The second of these reviews, the Strategic Defence Review stage, was due to commence in 2021.  With the establishment of the independent Commission on the Defence Forces by Government in December 2020, a decision was taken to pause commencing the Strategic Defence Review until the Commission on the Defence Forces had completed their report and Government had been given time to consider the report.

Following detailed consideration of the Commission Report the Minister for Defence brought to Government a High Level Action Plan and a Memo for Government which were approved on July 12th last year.  Part of the High Level Action Plan was the progression of a number of early actions one of these being the commencement of the Strategic Defence Review.

The essential ingredients of the White Paper defence review process is to ensure an updated security assessment and a fresh consideration of the implications of this assessment for overall policy requirements, associated tasks, capability development and resourcing.

The first stage of this review will be a security environment analysis to be conducted by an interdepartmental working group which is due to commence shortly.