 So, thank you very much, Darv. My name is Keyne Fitzgerald. I am the Security and Defence Researcher here at the IAA, and I'm very pleased to be moderating this YPN, asking the question, is Ireland neutral? And I'm very happy to be joined by Conor Gallagher, who's written a book of the same title, and Conor will be speaking for about 10 to 15 minutes, and hopefully during that process he'll be able to answer definitively whether Ireland is neutral or not. Just a bit of housekeeping before we begin. Regarding the Q&A, if you'd like to ask a question, once Conor has finished speaking, just simply raise your hand, and a member of our team will bring a microphone to you. This conversation is on the record, both the Q&A as well as Conor's remarks will be on the record as well. And please feel free to join us on Twitter using the handle at IIA. So, just to give you a little bit of information by Conor, though I'm sure most of you know him from his writing in the Irish Times, Conor Gallagher is the crime and security correspondent for the Irish Times, where he reports on issues concerning defence and state security, including developments in the defence forces and the rise of hybrid threats. He joined the newspaper in 2017, and he recently published Is Ireland Neutral, a book examining the involving definitions of Irish neutrality in the decades since independence, and its future in an increasingly uncertain world. He's a graduate of the DCU journalism programme and has a master's degree in political communications. So, Conor, if you don't mind, could you tell us a little bit about your book, and perhaps could you answer the question, once and for all, Is Ireland Neutral? Thank you so much for that, and I can definitively say that I won't be answering the question, Is Ireland Neutral, because despite writing a book about it, I'm still not sure. I'm probably not selling the book or my contribution to the debate, but I suppose that reflects my conclusion that neutrality is such a flexible topic and it's trying to even define neutrality can be like trying to, you know, hurt cats. There's so many definitions of us globally and throughout history, and of course Ireland has its own, possibly weirdest interpretation of neutrality. I was motivated to write the book, which I started just after Axie Rush's invasion of Ukraine. So there's a relatively quick turnaround, but I'd been taking about it for a while, just because I realized that kind of this notion that I grew up with, that Ireland was always a neutral country, you know, in the vein of Switzerland, maybe a little bit more aligned with the US and UK, but generally speaking, a pure neutral. And then just, you know, preliminary research, which made me realize that only scratched the surface of what was factually accurate. And I suppose, you know, if there's a main takeaway from the book, it's that not that Ireland is not neutral or that Ireland is neutral, it's that Ireland has always had an incredibly complex and flexible relationship with the idea of neutrality. And I mean, just going back to the very foundations of the state, when I think I start the first chapter off with this is, you know, just months after the delegates signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London, before it was ratified and before the start of the Civil War, we had the second command of the National Army as it was then going to Paris to basically propose a military alliance with Paris. So right from the start, neutrality was not at all clear that it was going to be part of our founding ideals, even though it was discussed in the treaty negotiations before basically being discarded. Then as obviously we move through the 20s, neutrality, the idea of neutrality is very much in the background as the country tries to find its foundations and find its feet. We became involved in the League of Nations and the Commonwealth government probably doesn't get enough respect for actually the quiet but industrious approach to international relations and the work in the League of Nations in those early years. But even the idea of joining the League of Nations doesn't really correspond to neutrality because the League of Nations much more so than the UN was founded on the idea that if a member of a country broke the rules that the League would go to war basically to enforce its rules. Now as it turned out that none of that that didn't happen, the League was intrinsically weak because the US wasn't a part of it and for many, many other reasons and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and the Japanese invasion of Venturius showed Devalera in the 30s that the League was not really worth the paper it's written on and that's where you get the real genesis of our idea of neutrality when Devalera knew a war was coming down the tracks. He knew or we had a military that was not going to be able to contribute or effectively defend the country. Neutrality was basically a national security decision to keep the country out of the war and it was a national security decision from a domestic and an international point of view because he was genuinely worried that we would have a civil war in Ireland if we joined the Allies. This is only 15 well just under two decades after the civil war. The IRA and subversive still had a good deal of support to old wounds were not fully closed over yet. So it's very easy to see how things could have gone south very quickly if you'd gone in with the Allies. But even still and this is one of the main, I guess, most well-known bits about neutrality. Ireland's story is its neutrality during World War II and the fact that we had the news Devalera's word at a certain consideration for Britain and most people are probably familiar with the Allied airmen crossed in Ireland, we would repatriate them and us sending weather reports to the Allies, including the ones then from Blackthod Lighthouse which persuaded Eisenhower to postpone D-Day by a day, potentially ensuring the success of the invasion. But right in the book I was really surprised by the other ways we assisted the Allies, most particularly in intelligence gathering and the conclusion of the US and UK intelligence agencies after the war was Ireland was basically in intelligence terms combatant or obligerant in the war in that respect. Basically everything we had that could have been in value to the Allies was passed on to the extent that after the war, the MI5 or MI6, which everyone is the James Bond one, had a report, had a history of MI5 during World War II and said that Ireland being neutral or neutral was much more beneficial to the Allied war effort than it being on the Allied side. Because if we joined the Allies, they reasoned, we would have probably introduced conscription. We would have had hundreds of thousands of Irish men in defence forces uniforms on the island waiting for an invasion that might never come. The Brits would have had to give us anti-air weapons and tanks and all this sort of thing, which at the start of the war went very, very short supply. But because we were neutral, so hundreds of thousands of those Irish men were able to both enlist in the British armed forces and more importantly enlist in the British war industry. So they concluded that our quote-unquote neutrality was actually the best thing they could have wished for. And then after the war, you know, maybe it's not as well known and it's becoming more well known now possibly. This idea that we were going to stay neutral was by no means assured. And that became very clear when the early days of NATO had been founded. And we were, the inter-party government as it was then, was very keen on joining NATO. They saw it as the best bulwark against the communism threat. You know, at the time, there were serious concerns about the Red Army overrunning Europe, like genuinely held concerns and Catholic Ireland tossed that NATO was a good way to resist this. And you know, the documents from the time show a great enthusiasm for NATO, but they also show this idea that we couldn't join NATO while partisans still existed. And so then you had the Minister for External Affairs, Sean McBride, who later became a huge critic of NATO. He was saying to, so these kind of informal approaches from Britain and America, he was saying to them, we want to join NATO, we'd love to join NATO, but we can't until you give us the Six Counties back. And he had been told that Ireland was so strategically vital to the NATO system that either the Brits would give the Six Counties back and there was a Labour government in Britain at the time and the Irish government had this idea that the Labour government wouldn't care as much as the Tories about Northern Ireland. But they thought even if the Labour government decided they didn't want to give the Six Counties back, the Americans would pressure them to give the Six Counties back. McBride's gambit failed completely. The Americans basically said absolutely not, we're not going to annoy our closest ally Britain. To them, Irish membership in NATO was something that would be nice to have, but by no means essential. And in the words of one American senior diplomat, I just said basically to the Irish, it's been nice knowing you. But even that didn't signal the start of Irish neutrality as we know it today. Ireland still went to the Americans and suggested a bilateral defence alliance outside of NATO. But the Americans said no, if we offer that to you, we'd have to offer that to everyone and then no one would end up joining NATO. So there the matter lay and kind of I started in the book at least looking at it again in the next stage from the Cold War perspective and does neutrality apply to a Cold War is an even harder question to ask, but in any way that mattered, we weren't neutral. We were very, very much on the side of the Western and the NATO and the Atlantic countries. One early example was Operation Sandstorm, which was a survey by British forces of the Irish coast. And this would be if the Soviets invaded Europe and the Americans had to come over the Atlantic to take it back. They needed to know where to land and Ireland to take it back. And this was carried out with the full cooperation of the defence forces. The British coming over had to paint their equipment in Irish army colours and they had to wear civilian uniforms. It didn't work. One reason it didn't work is the first time anyone in Ireland had seen a helicopter. So it was traffic jams off a beach in Donegal of this British helicopter going back and forth and everyone trying to get a look. But still it didn't make the newspapers. So it worked to an extent, I suppose. But sorry, I don't want to take you through every little bit of Irish neutrality. But there was certainly in terms of espionage as well, we can see the preference for the Western side. I mean we wouldn't even unless the Russian embassy be open in Ireland until the 70s or 74 I think it opened. And we only did so with great reluctance from some government ministers, including the Minister for Justice who said, you complain you didn't have enough guards to monitor all the Russian spies who'd be coming in with the embassy opening. Another interest and kind of vignette I came across was this case of crinian and wyman. And crinian was a mid-ranking guard in the guard intelligence section. And wyman was an MI5 spy who recruited crinian to give him very sensitive documents. And it's the only instance I know of at least of a wyman was arrested and so was crinian. And it's the only instance I know of spies being actually arrested in Ireland outside of World War Two. And they were both put on trial in the special criminal court. But the Attorney General refused to hand over documents which would have been essential to the prosecution, meaning the main charges were dropped against them and they were basically given a slap in the wrist and allowed to quietly leave the country. So you can draw your own conspiracy theories from that. But I suppose then, a particular interest maybe to this group is, you know, joining the EEC as it was then in the 70s, it was always on the mind of Irish governments when they were thinking about joining the European community that would eventually conclude an armed alliance. And even go back to Son Le Mas said that. He said, you know, he thinks the final stage of the European project will be an armed alliance, if not a European army, but at least a NATO style mutual defense pact. And actually Patrick Keating, who, me and Keating, we're talking about earlier, he was a massive help with the book and he's an academic who has basically been the sole kind of researcher in the area of Irish neutrality for many years. And he said to me when we joined, he was asked by Ortee to take part in the debate about joining the EEC and he was asked to, you know, comment on how it would affect Irish neutrality. But then Ortee lost the actual footage of us before they could air it and so they just did without, which maybe shows you how unimportant it was seen as to the debate at the time. And I just, I suppose I'll just finish up maybe with the odd relationship who I've noticed in Ireland between neutrality and the military. And this appears to be pretty unique in the world, that we have an idea of neutrality that means not investing in the defense forces, not investing in any kind of, not talking about security or debating security, it being confined to a very nice topic. To the extent, I mean, think about it, there's no Ortee defense correspondence. That's pretty unusual for like a Western country or any country for that matter. So that has been linked to a steady decline in defense forces over, well, sorry, it's not a steady decline, it's a permanent state of ineffectiveness, which sometimes is more effective than other times. And right now, which in a crisis period, you know, we're down past 8,000 members, there is a lot of debate and a lot of promises to address that. We've yet to see anything that will actually bring those members back up and the numbers are still going in the wrong direction, as far as I know. And this has led us to the situation where Ireland cannot defend its neutrality, whether you believe we are neutral or not. You know, we have the RAF have responsibility for monitoring Irish skies to an extent, or we're not able to police our own maritime zone because of our lack of ships and sailors. So you've got this weird idea of neutrality, which is not only not getting involved in any fighting, but not even being able to defend yourself, which goes against the albeit scant international definition of neutrality, which is contained in the the Hague Treaty of 1907, which basically says that you have to be able to defend your neutrality. But we will maybe finish by just saying before we go into the Q&A that the book, and I don't know if anyone's read it, but it's not a anti or pro neutrality book. And I really wanted to take that position because to me, neutrality and it's not a moral position, or it's not really an ideological position, it's a matter of foreign policy, and it's what foreign policy benefits the country at the stage they are at. So the version of neutrality we had in during World War II was the version that benefited us at the time. That's not to say we can't have a version now that benefits us, or even abandon it completely if it benefits the country. There was a Swedish gentleman at the recent international, or form an international security who I think put it very succinctly where he said neutrality is not a religion. You know, it's not something you are blindly obliged to uphold, but it's something that can be very useful in protecting your citizens and advancing your interests. And so there's a couple of other bits where we probably come to them and the Q&A came. Fantastic. Well again, thank you very much for this really, really insightful kind of reflection on your book. And just if anyone is interested, both Connors book is also available at stores. I bought mine in Eastons. I don't have it with me. It's actually upstairs. I forgot it. But also if you're interested, I do have it. But also if you're interested in Patrick Eating published a paper with the IAA in 2022 and it's available on our website if you'd like to explore this topic further. But I would recommend touching with Connors book first. So just kind of moving from the historic, historical reflections to I guess more recent history, which is to the Consultative Forum on International Security. I was just hoping to quickly ask if you could provide maybe what your sense of how the forum went was and perhaps maybe offer a couple of reflections on how you thought that and what you thought the discussion was like and maybe some moments we stood out to you, especially as you also chaired one of the panels. Yeah, obviously the forum, I think it was handicapped in one way and helped in another way. It was probably helped by the President's commentary on it, criticizing the makeup. Somewhat unfair commentary I thought he said it was made up of the admirals, the generals, and the Air Force. And it did a little bit of a caught at Louise Richardson, although that might have been overplayed. But I do think that actually made people more aware of the forum and probably helped people tune into it. And I think if they did tune in, they would have been surprised by how broad ranging it was, how it wasn't actually a forum about neutrality. You know, neutrality was a thread that went through a lot of the topics. But you know, there was really good insight into things like cyber defense, hybrid warfare, election interference, the role of the UN and the role of the OSCE and that sort of thing. So the President and maybe some other commentators I think did a little bit of a disservice by making it out to be kind of some government ploy to bounce us into NATO. It was much more broad ranging than that. But I suppose I could kind of see the point of some of the critics of it that, you know, it was a government organized forum. It was organized by civil servants. So they were always going to set the agenda. At the same time, though, its critics probably spoke more at the forum than many of the contributors. They were allowed to speak at length from the floor or whatever, which I know you might say is not the same as being allowed to speak from the podium. But they were also, it was criticized, there was no pro-neutrality people on it. Well, like, there was a lot of pro-neutrality people on it. They just didn't maybe wear it on their sleeves. You know, there's this whole dichotomy or this whole idea in Ireland that the debate is between pro and anti-neutrality people. It's actually very hard to find any anti-neutrality people or at least any people who are in favor of us joining NATO. That's not the government position. That's not the position of certainly most of the electorate. It's only maybe a select few who think we should join NATO. And I think the forum reflected that. I moderated one of the debates which is about the history of neutrality, which I thought was really enjoyable. I thought it was actually going to be quite controversial because of all the protests and that sort of thing. But because we were just talking to academics and historians, it was quite grounded and very, very interesting. We didn't actually have to get too much into the hot-button current topics of partnership for peace or the battle groups, the EU battle groups or that sort of thing. So I think it was a success. But as I said at the start, it was hamstrung by one thing and that of course is the Ortee thing. The Ortee controversy which just took all the oxygen from us, which meant that it probably didn't break through or cause enough of those discussions around dinner tables which I think was one of the main goals of the forum. Thank you. Do you have any questions coming from the floor? The gentleman over here. Firstly, thank you very much. Really interesting talk. I suppose this isn't so much about neutrality, although there would be major impacts for neutrality and I'm not sure if this question would have an answer. But traditionally, when we think of defence, we think of land, sea, air and so forth. But to me, and neutrality as well is not sending troops, not being invaded. I don't think too much thing is being invaded. But cyber attacks, to what extent is Ireland as a nation defensively prepared for a large-scale cyber attack? And if we aren't prepared, will that lead us further down needing support from NATO or some other non-neutral bodies? Yeah, I mean, we have a perfect real-world example of that with the HSE attack in 2021, which saw we were completely unprepared. And that was a really unsophisticated attack as these things go. I mean, these people were in the system for weeks and weeks before they were detected. And they were detected, but then people didn't take action early enough. And we did have to rely on other people. We didn't have to use NATO structures. And I think, I'm not too familiar with the intricacies of the NATO treaties, but cyber attack doesn't even come under the heading of Article 5 anyway, the Common Defense Clause. But there was a huge amount of reliance on other countries through bilateral arrangements. It did serve as a wake-up call. They have, I think, quadrupled the staff in the National Cyber Security Centre. It's finally got a director now. I didn't have a director before because the salary they were advertising was far too low to compete with the private sector. But you have, and they have, one of the things they've been doing is been establishing or solidifying those links with other countries through NATO structures and otherwise. Like we recently joined a NATO platform that shares details of malware attacks. Again, it's not becoming a member of NATO, but it's utilizing its tools where we've become a member of two NATO-accredited centres of excellence, one in Tallinn, in Estonia, which is cyber, and one in Helsinki, in Finland, which is hybrid, which includes cyber as well. And those are, people in charge with very much stress. They're not NATO-run, they're NATO-affiliated, and they're NATO-accredited, but they're not in the command and control structure of NATO. And one of the lesser-known ways we're assisting Ukraine, actually, is we've been assisting them in the cyber attacks. The director of the Cyber Security Centre, Richard Brown, said that in the Raktus Committee, I think, last month or the month before, that we're assisting them with the knowledge we got from the HSE attack, which was carried out by Russian hackers, many of whom with very close ties to Russian security services. So, in that sense, we're already integrated into that. And NATO membership, probably, it benefits in some ways, but we're able to plug into that international expertise without being a NATO, I think. Sorry, I don't know if that answers your question there. In the answer as well. Okay. Okay, so just to return to, I guess, something I noticed from reading your book, to prove that I don't have it, but I did read it. So, this is actually from the opening pages, which is, you reflect on the words used to describe neutrality. You know, lots and lots of different words, your permanent neutrality. But there's some interesting words that are used around Ireland's maybe specific character of its neutrality. The words, I think, just to check my notes very quickly here. We have the words, you know, traditional neutrality, Ireland being militarily neutral, but not politically neutral. And I wonder, could you perhaps reflect on in your view from the research that you've done, well, how can we best describe Irish neutrality? And I know it's not going to be contained in one word, but how best can we describe Irish neutrality as it stands today? Well, arguably, by not calling neutrality at all, by coming up with some other term that's maybe more descriptive, such as non-bligerant maybe, but even that's not very accurate because that would mean we'd have to be a war for us to be non-bligerant in. And, you know, neutrality in the legal sense, in the old strict legal sense, only applies during the time of war. So, you know, this idea of being a permanent neutral is something relatively new. When the government talks about our traditional idea of neutrality, I think my argument would be we don't have a traditional idea of neutrality. Or neutrality has been in flux throughout the history of the 100-year history of the state. And it's increased to become narrower and narrower to the point where now the government talks about our military but not political neutrality, which is based on the idea that we're not a member of NATO and we're not a member of, we're not signed up to any kind of EU mutual defense pact, which doesn't exist, but we're not signed up to it anyway. So, it's a very, very narrow conception of neutrality. Probably be harder for it to be more narrow. So, yeah, sorry, I'm not sure if that answers your question, but yeah, I think we have the most narrow idea of neutrality to the extent that you could argue the term doesn't apply at all. Okay. Perhaps raises some questions as well. So, do we have any more questions just coming from the floor very quickly before returning to my own questions? This gentleman at the front here, and maybe the gentleman afterwards, you might pair them if that's okay. Sure, yeah. Thank you. I was just wondering, in light of having attended the Consultative Forum and in terms of recent events, do you think that does signal that the government is starting to take security and defense policy a lot more seriously or do you think it's just going to be another report that will, you know, sit on a shelf? Grant, do you want to? Yeah, thank you again for the excellent presentation and discussion. A very short question. Based on our extended experience with the UN Security Council and sending troops abroad, et cetera, what would be the overnight implications of us declaring non-neutrality, essentially, to the Irish state? Would there be any major implications, obviously, if we have... We're not able to defend ourselves anyway, but we'd be basically kicking the RAF out of our skies to say, no, we're not taking your assistance anymore, et cetera, et cetera, and all that. So, I'll just take that last one first while it's fresh in my mind. If we were to declare overnight we're no longer neutral, well, nothing would happen whatsoever, because neutrality is not enshrined in the Constitution or in legislation, for the most part. Sorry, it is defined in the Constitution in terms of after Lisbon where it said we'd never sign up to a EU defense pact without another referendum, but there is no such pact, so arguably that doesn't matter. So, the only way our neutrality could substantially change overnight is if the overarching came out and said, you know, he took plane over to Vilnius where the NATO guys are meeting and said, actually, we want to join too, but which I don't see that happening, and that's because when people say that Ireland or the governments are really, really keen on joining NATO, like the question I always ask is why, what do they have to gain from it politically? I mean, every poll is up to 80% people say we shouldn't join NATO or we should maintain our neutrality, so there's no political gain from them, there's no financial gain, quite the opposite, it would cost us an absolute fortune, you know, that there's the goal of NATO countries having at least 2% at defense expenditure. We have 0.2%, the government has committed to raise that by 50%, by 2028, which is a significant raise in Irish terms, but it still would leave us the lowest spending in Europe in relative terms as far as I know. So I just don't see it happening either in the short term or the long term, obviously never say never, but, you know, I don't see public opinion changing on us, barring some really, really unrealistic scenarios, Russia's troops parachuting into Donegal or something, and the first question there about will the report sit on the shelf, I do think the government are starting to take questions of international security and defense more seriously. Some of that is down to maybe some subtle pressure from their EU allies, some of it is down to a realization of just how poorly defended and informed we are about those issues, and part of that was due to the commission on the defense forces report which found that we're basically entirely unable to defend ourselves militarily from both conventional attacks and many of the more kind of hybrid forms of warfare that people have been talking about recently. So they are definitely, and that was one of the goals at a forum I think to not just generate a report, but they were really, they were pushing in the media, they were offering interviews with people, they wanted it to get a lot of coverage, they wanted it to cause some debate, not even agreeing with them, but they wanted people to talk about it. They achieved that to an extent, but unfortunately a lot of it came down to a minor request of neutrality or NATO. In terms of will the report sit on itself, it could easily sit on a shelf. I mean the chair, Louise Richardson, she's very capable, I'm sure she will put together a very good report, but it will have no binding power. It'll have much less impact than say the results of a citizens assembly say, it'll be used to, the government officials have made it clear it'll be used to maybe inform government policy, but not dictate it in any way. So it depends on what the political will is, but I could see it sitting on itself, absolutely. One thing I think we might see coming from it is it might be used as a basis for changing the triple lock. Which in case people don't know is this idea of that before Ireland can send more than 12 troops armed, troops abroad, it has to have the consent of the government, the Iraqis, and a UN mandate, which essentially means a UN Security Council mandate. The government argue, well that gives a group of five of the most powerful countries in the world of veto, because the permanent five have veto over all decisions. So that means Russia, China, UK, France, and America can all dictate our foreign policy. Which to me is a very anti-neutrality or a very non-neutral position that you give another country control over your foreign policy, but for some reason it's become very closely associated with the ardent neutrality camp. They've gotten a little bit off topic there, but I do think that's one change, solid change we might see coming from it. And something that we were discussing before the event opened was Minister Ryan's proposal for an alternative to the triple lock, which I'm hoping perhaps you could explain a little bit to the audience and then perhaps maybe identify is that a viable option for us going forward or is it something, what are the potential pitfalls of moving to Minister Ryan's proposal? Yes, sure. So the Green Party has long been a stance defender of the triple lock and I think even a lot of its members still are very strong defenders of the triple lock. They see it as an endorsement of the UN an endorsement of multilateralism and this idea of the rules-based international order. But Eamon Ryan's kind of adjusting of that policy recently would propose that we still have a triple lock but the third lock could be replaced by, if I remember correctly, a vote by the UN General Assembly or a mandate from another regional organisation and that could be like the EU of course but it could also be something like the African Union. I don't know how workable that is. The General Assembly don't really do anything in terms of establishing peacekeeping missions at least without the Security Council so that would raise some issues and obviously if you were replacing with the EU mandates the EU requires unanimity on foreign policy decisions and CSDP missions so you're just replacing one mandate with another mandate and one veto with another veto basically although with an EU veto at least it would be a veto by countries you arguably share more values with than say Russia or China but still you're still left with the problem that you're giving other countries a veto over your foreign policy so maybe he has more detailed proposals about the intricacies of how that would work but I think the devil might be in the detail on that one. Excellent thank you very much we just have a question from over here. In your book you talked a bit about how take Switzerland for example a lot of neutral countries think that to be neutral you need to defend that neutrality whereas in Ireland we seem to have this conflation of neutrality with a weak military like for instance we're not funding defence forces and it's very unpopular to fund the defence forces I was just wondering if you came across any reasoning behind that conflation in the Irish public. Yeah it's a great question I think it's really fascinating to look at the reason why we have such a a low opinion of the matters of defence and why things like security and the military are an afterthought in terms of policy I think you have to go right back to the the civil war basically and the war of independence and the years after that when the department or the governments were scared of the military like there was a failed mutiny basically you could call us where the senior army officers were complaining about being passed over for promotion and pay and also not enough was being done to reunite or end partition and that was back in 20 1924 I think and sorry 1923 and so that was a really dangerous point for the country and the government response to that was to basically fire all of those guys and put new people in place and then their more long term response and this was a response by Department of Foreign Affairs and or Department of the Exchequer basically was to control the army by starving it of resources so they would never pose a threat like that again and so the they passed an act and the act itself is very boring and it looks quite inconsequential but it was called the Minister and Secretaries Act the Ministers and Secretaries Act and it basically gave the finance line item veto over every bit of defense spending so if the defense forces wanted to buy cable for a telegraph or a new bullets or whatever they'd have to get approval from finance and finance would basically be making military decisions for you don't need that you don't need that so you had all these situations even coming up to World War II when everyone new war was coming when the defense forces were saying we need anti-aircraft guns we need you know defenses here and we need tanks and Spitfires and whatnot and finance saying you don't need those things you don't need those things and you know basically you had the being counters making military decisions which is not a good situation for anyone and that just kind of continued you could say to peace keep when we got involved in peace keeping in the early 60s late 50s sorry that represented a high point for the defense forces but only from the point of view of burnishing our reputation on the world stage still domestically we were an afterthought there might be some sign that's beginning to change but arguably it's too little too late I mean you talked to some rather if you're senior military officers now and they're despondent you know they just see the organization in free fall but I think you know I think they could turn it around I think they probably will turn it around but there is a deep deeply ingrained a version in certain sections of the civil service to matters of defense and security just one question over here and then we have another question over there this is just kind of a follow-up question from that but I was just wondering obviously Ireland's close relationship with the U.S. and the U.K. is seen amongst the public as a very positive thing in our foreign policy but do you think that could have a bearing on this attitude towards the defense forces among the Irish public and it's almost a sense of riding off the coattails of those nations that we don't need a strong defense force ourselves Do you want to take that now? Yeah sure yeah yeah I definitely think there's a sense that among the Irish people and this is kind of speculation on my part but it's supported by the Poland to an extent that we know our friends will help us in a pinch which may or may not be true I mean it probably is true I mean certainly just to go back to the HSE cyber attack our friends helped us when we needed to get Irish citizens out of Kabul airport the Finnish and French gave us space on their planes the same in Khartoum and Sudan we got help from European allies so you know there we have gotten we've gotten away with it to an extent you know and part of that is because you know Irish people are genuinely well liked you know the Irish officials have good relationships with their counterparts in other countries but there's also the idea that yeah we do enjoy the more pointed protections of our neighbors as well like if you look at the recent polling about this deal we have with the RAF to kind of monitor and protect Irish skies I think 40% of people said they were absolutely fine with it and that was and I think only something like 20% of people said they had an objection to it and then the rest said they didn't know so you know there is definitely a strong feeling that sure yeah we don't need to our friends will will help us out and there's a little bit of justification for that you know because they always have helped us out in as much as we've needed it I suppose the only warning maybe or dark clouds on the horizon might be second Trump administration and the Americans pulling out of Europe or disavowing the kind of protection of Europe all together then we might see a very sharp change in attitudes Regarding very quickly about your about kind of our partner countries and you know with the idea that they would come to our defense it's so could some of this be located back to the origins of the our state where we were in the original treaty that you know looking after Ireland's seas and Ireland's airs would be with their you know would be under the remit of his majesty's imperial forces is that perhaps something that you know the situation we're in now could that potentially be traced back to that or are these completely unrelated I think yeah that certainly maybe on an official level it could be go back that the kind of the fact of security being an afterthought probably owes in official circles maybe owes some of its history to the fact that well up until the mid-30s you know Britain did protect us or not now there wasn't much to protect us from at the time you know it was a relatively calm period in western Europe but yeah I'm sure an official level it did I'm not sure about a societal level though I think maybe it set the stage for just broadly speaking in Irish society not to think too much about defence and the other thing of course is our geography like you know we are really really lucky you know about where we are in western Europe an island off an island and you know there's no reason we shouldn't play to those strengths you know there's a reason we don't need to spend two percent of our budget on the military and most of that is related to where we are so I think we just have one question over there Thanks Connor just maybe taking a sort of EU focus on things for a minute say under the Lisbon Treaty and mutual defence clause contained within the Lisbon Treaty and my query really as well how do you have that on the one hand but then you also have going back to the time the Lisbon referendum in Ireland when it was rejected the first time and guarantees being given of the wake of that initial defeat in a referendum that Ireland's neutrality wouldn't be affected but then you have a mutual defence clause within the treaty itself and the French a number of years ago actually I think invoking that like how in practice is that kind of stuff going to work out or what's the thinking at EU level as to having a mutual defence clause but then whether it's and how meaningful it is in reality yeah so the mutual defence clause 42.7 I think is as far as I can see written in such a way as to be meaningless as in France invoked it after the Batclan attacks but the way they didn't have to invoke but there was actually another clause that was probably more applicable relating to terrorist attacks but they invoked 42.7 and the a lot of observers think they invoked 42.7 to kind of give it a test run to see what it actually means and to also to kind of generate a sense of European solidarity with France at the time so we we you know answered to call to arms in a way in that we sent troops to Mali or Chad which relieved French troops to come back to to France or to go to actually to go to Middle East to fight ISIS so we contributed in an indirect way even though the mission we contributed did that comply with the triple lock so it wasn't too controversial other countries contributed by sending police I'm not sure if there was any direct military assistance or even if they needed military assistance but we did so and there's other countries in the EU which didn't contribute anything so I think that that instance showed that the mutual defence clause as it currently stands doesn't have implications for neutrality as we see it also there's the thing about you know they made us vote again in the Lisbon Treaty but they did polls after us and they discovered that the reason people rejected at the first time neutrality was there but it was way down the list you know there was things like immigration taxation national sovereignty were much higher on the list of reasons why they rejected Lisbon I'm sorry the most one was that the lack of information about it that was the most commonly cited reason for voting no but yeah that the mutual defence thing I wouldn't say it's not what the paper is written on but it's certainly far far away from a mutual defence clause just a question over here then thank you very much my question is on the pros and cons of a country joining NATO you've mentioned that obviously if Ireland were to join NATO obviously would have to spend 2% of our budget on the military so apart from that spend what would be the other major disadvantage of joining NATO or in other words if a country say like Ireland were to join NATO does it stand to gain more or lose more I would say it stands to I don't know it kind of goes back to the idea of that neutrality I don't think is a moral question or an ideological question or should be viewed as an ideological question I think we would have more to go back and forth to it actually like I think more to lose personally speaking I'd be against joining NATO and the most obvious reason is that article 5 you know you don't have control of your own foreign policy in certain very extreme situations and you are tied into a vast military apparatus you do have to spend more than maybe you want to on on the military budget and as I said earlier you know we're protected by geography to a certain extent and I say a certain extent in other ways geography offers no protection but there's no reason we shouldn't take advantage of that protection and so right now as the situation stands I think neutrality would be a net minus for Ireland but ask me again tomorrow and I might have a different answer do you have any more questions from the floor okay perfect so I guess something that I've noticed throughout not only just the discussions around your book but even just the discussions that we saw at the forum as well is that there's always this and this is going to maybe contradict a little bit what you've been saying but and there's always this tension between I guess idealism of how we would like the world to look and what Irish neutrality would look like in that context and I guess pragmatism and I guess we could call Irish policy in during the Second World War pragmatism and thinking about today and Ireland's not being politically neutral but being militarily neutral to what extent could we call that idealism or to what extent could we call that pragmatism I guess is somewhere in between but perhaps you could maybe shine a little bit more light on to that I take the the Ukraine situation offers a really good glimpse into how the government is trying to maintain some links to neutrality as an ideological concept and what I mean by that is we are contributing military supplies to Ukraine something we've never done well sorry we're contributing military equipment to a country that is a war with another country for use in that war and we've never done that before in the history of the state so it's a huge change to to this conception of military neutrality or traditional neutrality but we are not they're non-lethal supplies so we're contributing things like we're contributing our pro-rata rate of the European Peace Fund but our our base goes exclusively to rations and body armour and you know fuel and it's it seems to me that's where the ideology comes in and maybe it's kind of a the strangeness of virus neutrality comes in because we're putting body armour on Ukrainian soldiers to go into battle we're putting fuel in their tanks you know just because we're not buying the guns does that make us any more or buying the guns or the bullets does that make us any more pure and as well with the we're obviously training Ukrainian troops as well we're training them in counter IED ordnance disposal and demining and also things like combat medicine and those are all noble things you know your saving lives your clearing minefields for civilians but there are also things that are essential to a army aggressive army operations and the Ukraine's counter offensive that's going on right now you know you need to demine a field before you can send your troops across it to attack the enemy so again it's that kind of it shows our weird relationship with neutrality and it kind of it's that idea of that neutrality is what we need it to mean at any one time while at the same time still having still trying to maintain some line some connection to neutrality not just thrown it out altogether well I think this is kind of also just connected to this idealistic approach to neutrality a potentially in the sense of like the popular sense of Irish neutrality and again this also came out in the form was you know Irish neutrality allies Ireland to be an honest broker when it engages with the world and we saw in one of the panels we had a Norwegian individual and a Swedish and a Swiss individual and they talked about the implications of you know what how could a non-neutral with similar foreign policy to Ireland interact with interact with the world how could a neutral country how does that impact their foreign policy and I guess my question is from your sense of reading things but also I guess maybe looking at in the historical record as well is you know there's a lot of kind of declaratory statements of yes it means we're an honest broker no it doesn't and I guess perhaps you could weigh in a little bit on that you know is it sort of is it sort of yeah that was one of the more interesting things in writing the book I spoke to a lot of diplomats and retired diplomats about Ireland's role and the world stage and this idea of positive neutrality you know this idea that neutrality doesn't just mean shuttering yourself off the world it means going into the UN negotiating arms control treaties it means sending peacekeepers abroad it means you know donating large amounts of money to international aid and it means helping the broker peace agreements you know overseas say in the Middle East or in Central or South America and I asked that of basically everyone I interviewed was like does Ireland's neutrality help us in that regard and the answer was almost invariably no it doesn't people don't so when we're trying to maybe be a positive player on the world stage other countries don't especially in the global south don't view us as neutral they don't know we're neutral or and if they do know they're neutral it's way down to things they think about what they think of Ireland they think of us as a white wealthy country an EU country first and foremost us not being a nation or us being neutral doesn't really come into us if they do think of us in those terms they think of us as a country with a history of throwing off a colonial power and that can be really helpful and that can be really helpful in peacekeeping situations say so in I interviewed one general who was saying that you know in Lebanon back at least before current hensons you know Irish people Irish peacekeepers would get a much better reception than French peacekeepers because the French peacekeepers obviously had a history of colonialism including in the Middle East whereas Ireland never had that history and quite the opposite so our history and our story as a non as a colonized power rather than a colonizer really helps us in that regard but is of questionable usefulness when you're talking about being that kind of moral power in negotiating say arms control treaties like that the cluster munitions have been in the news a lot recently with the US decision to send them to Ukraine and Ireland was at the forefront of negotiating that treaty on cluster munitions the ban cluster munitions which over a hundred countries signed and we held two weeks of talks in Dublin Castle to kind of get it over the line but there's a reason it was signed in Oslo and not Dublin and Oslo was in Norway which is a NATO member because they took the final lead on us and so you can a lot of these you know look at Norway is a prime example you know the Oslo Accords were in Palestine and Israel again it's called the Oslo Accords because Norway led the way but one thing there's one exception to that and that is the nuclear arms control treaties so in the 60s Frank Aitken was a driving force behind the Non-Proliferation Act which was you know hugely important on the world stage in limiting the spread of of nuclear weapons and people I spoke to said it would have been difficult to get that to take a lead on that if you were a nuclear armed country or in under the explicit protection of a nuclear umbrella so that's maybe one exception but this whole idea of neutrality makes us a more moral person on the world stage I think is at least questionable Okay we're starting to run a little bit low on time so I'd like to get some more questions in from the audience if we have any more so we have one question there and one question there you might start with this one first Hi I'm just wondering hypothetical scenario let's say it's October it's budget time and you had the opportunity to double funding in one area of defence be it radar, cyber and let's say that money couldn't go towards health or housing what would you choose? I would ask you put me in charge of that process I suppose going to my head no pun intended maybe maritime you know that's we're a maritime nation we've a body of water seven times the size of our land to protect before ships to do us and an ever decreasing number of sailors in which to man those ships so if there was a way to throw money at the problem it would be the navy because you know and there's fishery protection there's protection in national infrastructure and there's also the contribution we can make in the world stage to things like operation Irene which we have sent we have a ship over there right now actually but that that leaves a big hole in our maritime defence at home so probably maritime and even more so than land that's an area that's been neglected by the government since the foundation state I mean the navy was only officially founded in 46 or 47 I think you know where Air Force or Air Corps is older than the navy which is very unusual and obviously that goes back to the treaty ports and the Royal Navy responsible for for our maritime protection until the the mid-30s but it also reflects a kind of sea blindness that we're an island nation but we often don't think of ourselves of ourselves as an island nation thank you just a question over here yeah thank you very much so just going back to Russia-Ukraine conflict obviously it was very much involved from the European Union side as well so do you think that if Ireland decided to be pragmatic and follow the historical part of being neutral would that very much affect the stand of Ireland as European Union member because all the all the European Union members they know that Ireland is military neutral but to me it looks like in this situation it can't be fully politically neutral so but what's your opinion on that so if if if if we decided to give up neutrality how would it change and no so if if Ireland decided to go completely neutral and not to be involved in any military support of Ukraine I mean as you said not sending the you know armor and everything so how would that affect the Ireland being as a member of the European Union I think it's not an area I'm massively familiar with in terms of like relationships between EU member states but I think it would be massively damaging to our stance as an EU member state I mean one thing at least at the start in 2022 there was a huge amount of unity in the EU about how to respond to the invasion and things like even the refugee arrangements the European Peace Fund being diverted almost entirely to support in Ukraine's military the train and mission being set up and all the other one the the non-military support that's been brought in and that's that's been maintained as far as I can see aside from some cracks maybe from Hungary and I think for us to deviate from that in any major way would be hugely damaging and in probably kind of more long-term ways as well as short-term as in you know countries would be more suspicious of us more yeah yeah no I think it would be hugely damaging but again that's something massively ensuing with just as we're running to our to our last question and certainly throughout the forum but also in public discourse where we've seen huge engagement I guess from the public probably we could have seen more but the new cycle overtakes things always but we're seeing huge much more engaging from all of the political Irish political parties from across the political spectrum about what they would like to see on international security policy look like so I guess how confident are you that this discussion will continue at least at the political level but hopefully at the public level and what would you like to see happen to try and encourage greater public attention and public discussion on this is it perhaps a citizen assembly is it an RTE defence correspondent perhaps you can offer some suggestions maybe an Irish Times defence correspondent Irish Times defence correspondent would solve everything just tell that to my editor no and I think the conversation is going to go on and I think it has moved on a lot in the last mainly in the last year and people are starting to wake up to how defences we are in some ways and this whole idea of how you need to defend yourself not just from you know kinetic military threats but also this whole range of hybrid threats what I hope is that it doesn't just become this binary you know I'm against NATO I'm neutral kind of thing that we can actually put NATO to the side and everyone can agree we're not joining NATO no one wants to join NATO how can we develop our security and defence aside from that and we can have real practical discussions about us you know we don't need to buy fighter jets or maybe we do need to buy fighter jets but let's debate it on the merits of doing it not on whether that's a contravention of neutrality when the two things are totally separate things I mean you know so yeah I hope it can develop I think it will go on I just hope it goes on and then inform the kind of mature way and the media have responsibility in that regard politicians have responsibility in that regard like we've seen Sinn Fein I think moderate their position on some aspects of neutrality or sorry I'm conflating military things now with neutrality moderate their stance on things like the EU battle groups partnership for peace at the European Defence Agency and that sort of thing and also call for more military investment so that's a big development you know seeing the development from the greens but then on the left there's you know people who are saying who are criticising the government for buying ammunition or for buying CBORN protective equipment to protect you from chemical or or nuclear threats like these are defensive things they shouldn't be a contravention of neutrality to want to acquire them so yeah I just hope it continues in a more informed manner okay thank you very much Conor so I think this is time so firstly I'd like to thank all of my colleagues at the IAA Nisha with the microphone we have Lorcan here doing the doing the AV and most importantly I'd like to thank Conor for taking time to speak with us and to share an insight into his book as well as some of his reflections on the on the consultative form and international security policy Conor thank you very much thanks again