The establishment of a single EU defence policy is essential to genuine European integration, the Fine Gael MEP for Munster has said.
Mr John Cushnahan was responding to the first speech to the European Parliament by the EU High Representative for the Common, Foreign and Security Policy, Mr Javier Solana.
Mr Cushnahan placed a common defence policy on a par with a single currency, saying: "If you subscribe to one, you should support the other."
He called on all neutral states, "including my own", to support such a policy.
Mr Solana, former secretary-general of NATO, said his main priority would be the development of a European security and defence policy.
He said the crises in Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina had made it clear that the EU needed "more than just declarations of intent. We need to be able to act. And that means having military capabilities."
Deciding what these should be, how they should be achieved and how the Union should decide on their use, he continued, would be a key task at the European Council meeting in Helsinki next month.
"I believe that our civilisation, our way of life, our freedoms and our well-being can be defended much more effectively jointly than by each country alone," he said.
Agreeing, Mr Cushnahan said the "ineffective response" of the EU to the crises in Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo was a serious embarrassment.
However, Mr Prionsias De Rossa, the Labour Party MEP for Dublin, expressed his "serious concern" with Mr Solana's statement, which he said concentrated almost entirely on crisis management and increasing military capacity rather than on conflict prevention.
"I am deeply perturbed by this emphasis" he said. "There is a clear issue here for the Irish Government. It is now imperative that the Government make abundantly clear what its position is in respect to a common foreign and security policy".
Ms Patricia McKenna, the Green Party MEP for Dublin, said the public in neutral member-states was being misled on the implication of a single European defence policy.
"The Irish Government is being very dishonest", she said after the debate. "Almost everyone in the chamber said they wanted a strengthened European army.
"The support for the British and French proposal for a 40,000-strong rapid response army is clear. That is not being explained to the Irish people. And it's our money, as EU taxpayers, that will be used to bolster the European arms industry."
Mr Pat Cox, the Independent MEP for Munster and president of the Liberal group in the parliament, expressed his group's interest "in the non-debate that waxes and wanes every so often about the reform of the UN Security Council".
"It is a question that we must look at in due course, because if we really want to have a non-military as well as a military capacity, an effective voice at the Security Council would give substance to this beyond Europe itself," Mr Cox said.
