Sir, - Two Government departments seem to be quibbling over the way in which we will fund an increase in our defence capabilities (“Ireland should avail of EU loans for defence if scheme reopens, says Harris,” Home News, February 16th). I suppose this must be progress of some sort.
Ireland’s policy of neutrality was conceived under conditions that are so unrecognisable now as to make it a nonsense. A union of European states was utterly unthinkable at the outset of the second World War – the change in the general order of Europe and our place in it has been seismic. Our position now, as a resolute and committed member of the European Union, makes it imperative that we contribute to the shared defence of that union.
This also gets over a hurdle that could pave the way for the only kind of state neutrality worth having – true armed neutrality. No aggressor nation in history, right up to the present day, has ever respected the desire of a pacifist country not to be invaded.
Now things have changed again. The Atlantic alliance, so prominent during the cold war, is undergoing a sudden and traumatic reset. The western side of this cooperation has decided it no longer wants to fund the whole thing. While up to now it suited the US to dominate proceedings, this policy has also led to complacency on the part of the European components, from which they are now awakening.
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But if EU members and Britain have been complacent, Ireland has been criminally smug. It has even maintained what was, for a long time, a secret agreement that allows British military assets freedom of movement in Irish territorial waters and airspace. Allowing this has ensured Ireland’s western seaboard, which is also a part of the EU border to the Atlantic, can be protected. To maintain a modicum of national pride, we should be able to do that work ourselves, but it is also appropriate that we would do it in conjunction with an enhanced overall EU defensive capability, in which we would play our full part. - Yours, etc,
SEAMUS McKENNA
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.
