Michael Collins warns on defence spending and neutrality

The statements on international security and international trade are an important opportunity for us TDs here to have our say. Over the last number of weeks and months we have had a lot of people speaking here in relation to our neutrality and our participation in what is happening across the world. The Tony recently said that he is concerned that we need to spend a lot more money on our defence. I actually agree with that, but it is hugely important that that money is spent on improvements in relation to the people that are in the defence force in this country and in relation to equipment that is needed in this country to bring us up to some kind of a standard, because we have no standards the way we stand at this present time. I would have serious reservations about sending our defence forces at any stage to countries where there is conflict going on, even if there is a peace talks, because a lot of these peace talks do not work out, and sending our small number of defence force people out there to try and negotiate and try and keep peace in those countries could lead to an awful loss of life for Irish defence forces. The defence force are angry, they are hurt out there, because they have been mistreated down through the years. I think that successive governments have failed to deliver for the defence force for their everyday living. Now we are talking about spending an astronomical amount of money all of a sudden to change things around, but where is that money going to be spent, it has got to be asked. It is not long ago when we flew a helicopter up into the air and the door fell out in the defence forces. It is not long ago when a Russian ship was circling our island within our own zones, claiming that they were going to carry out exercises that would have led to the loss of massive amounts of fish in our country. It took the fishermen from Castleton Bear to go out and negotiate with them, to get them to accept that it was not going to work. Also, the cables that are on the ground here, on the water here, off our shores, are not being properly protected. That is where we need to spend money, protecting from what is going on in this country. But also protecting outside of our coastline, to make sure that we are a nation that actually spends money on our own defence force, on protecting our own country, and that we are always accepting that we are a neutral country. I think that is the one thing that we have maybe failed down through the years, is to get that point across stronger and stronger, is that we are a neutral country. We do not involve ourselves in wars, other people's wars out there. We certainly can voice our opinions. That brings me on to the next point, which is about international trade. One thing that pointed out to me in West Cork recently, by a very intelligent man, he said, the first people to implement any tariffs in this country was Ireland. You try and bring in a vehicle from England, it is called VRT or some other fancy name. So there was no problem in putting tariffs on vehicles here, when it suited ourselves if we were to buy in vehicles. The meeting, I want to move on to the meeting in relation to Micheál Martin, which I fully agree that he was right to meet with Donald Trump, because we have no hope of resolving any issues if we stand outside the door and Mary Lou. McDonald's stance on that was wrong, I think, in the SDLP and the Alliance party also. Good morning and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, good morning. Thank you.