Sir, – I couldn’t agree more with Liam Doran (Letters, January 2nd) that “we need to have a serious talk about the need for a military in this country” and with that in mind Slándáil, a volunteer group promoting debate and discussion of national security issues in Ireland, will host the inaugural Irish National Security Summit this February.
As part of the event we will have a number of forums looking at the future need for and roles of all state security services, including the Defence Forces.
The event is open to the public and I would invite Mr Doran to come along and put his plans for the future security needs of Ireland to our assembled panels of international and national experts.
If he has a coherent defence and security strategy for a modern sovereign state in Europe that doesn’t involve maintaining a military capability of some description, I’m sure our distinguished guests will be eager to hear his proposal.
With regards to Iceland, I note that he neglected to mention that Iceland is a member of Nato and still spends approximately 0.12 per cent of their GDP on defence.
While many neutral states were invaded and occupied during the second World War, it is perhaps noteworthy, if we wish to compare islands on the periphery of Europe, that the neutral Kingdom of Iceland, the forerunner to the modern republic, was invaded and occupied by British forces in 1940 due to that fact that it was seen as essential to the UK war effort.
During this same period senior members of the UK government and defence establishment also viewed Ireland and the treaty ports as essential to the UK war effort, and I shall leave it to your readers to decide if Ireland raising and maintaining armed forces post-independence had any impact on UK military planners. – Yours, etc,
Dr GERRY
WALDRON,
Director,
National Security
Summit Ireland,
Dublin 24.
Sir, – Throughout my working life, when in a social setting responding to being asked what I did for a living , I was met with the reply, “We do not need an Army. Sure what do you do all day?”
In other words, I was being told the Defence Forces were not needed by people who did not know what the Defence Forces actually did!
I and my colleagues did that which many were not prepared to do – to put ourselves in difficult and dangerous situations to keep Ireland’s stability intact, safe from subversion, and to defend Ireland’s democracy. Abroad, the Defence Forces have protected the peace, stabilised dangerous situations and saved thousands of lives.
In so doing, the Defence Forces have earned an envied and proud reputation for Ireland as a nation of good UN peacekeepers.
That some people do not appreciate this is a reflection on them, and all the more so as the sacrifices Defence Forces’ personnel and their families made and make every day would simply not be entertained or undertaken by those passing ill-considered comment. After all, we hardly did it for the pay.
DAN HARVEY,
(Lieut-Col, retired),
Cork.