Desperate defence is more than offensive
LEO Varadkar is certainly struggling as Taoiseach. Fine Gael’s poll ratings have fallen since he took office and he can’t seem to stay out of controversy.
What the people need to see from him is more action and fewer soundbites.
Don’t tell us what you are going to do, tell us what you have done.
He needs to start listening to the people on immigration before it is too late. At the moment ordinary people feel excluded from the debate as the left and the far right do battle on the issue.
ONE of the main priorities of any government is to defend its people and the State.
It is a duty written in the Constitution and should be utmost in the mind of every minister.
Yet for some unknown and appalling reason the current Coalition is in lala land when it comes to supporting our Army, Navy and Air Corps.
Our military is in a permanent state of crisis and rapid decline, putting the security of our country at risk.
The numbers speak for themselves. There are now 7,987 in our permanent Defence Forces, the lowest ever.
This is 1,543 below the staffing strength they should be.
But even more worrying, 500 people left our military last year – so far more are leaving than joining. There are pay, quality of life, bullying and moral issues.
Defence Minister Micheal Martin, who is only weeks in the job, already admits the trend is extremely worrying.
But what really concerns me is that for years we have had a bunch of civil servants in the Department of the Defence dictating to our military leaders what to do and blocking them at every turn with a complete and utter lack of investment.
You reap what you sow and the crisis now has been caused by years of utter financial neglect where our
brave servicemen and women were made to feel like second-class citizens.
They were never paid properly like gardai, firefighters, prison officers, paramedics, nurses and teachers.
Yet each and every one of them were expected to put their lives on the line.
There are those on the left who would say, so what, we are a neutral country.
Money spent on our military is a waste of public money, and could be put to better use elsewhere.
But that is exactly the attitude that now has us in the mess that we are in.
Ireland today is not the Ireland of old. We are an island in the Atlantic that is a bridge between Europe and America.
POWERS
However, we are also one of the tech centres of the world and apart from all the underwater cables carrying 95% of the world’s data coming ashore here and linking up with the rest of Europe, we also have thousands of international businesses to protect .
We also have the biggest sea area in the whole of the EU to patrol at a time of international crisis, and it is an area consistently used by various foreign powers for war games.
We still don’t have primary radar to see what is in our skies, we have no fighter jets and we are totally dependent on our neighbour the United Kingdom and the RAF to patrol our skies.
Our Navy is going down the tubes at 100mph. It has gone in 18 months from nine to four ships, has no underwater sonar systems and had to cancel 12 patrol days last month because of a lack of staff.
Our west coast is the place where the world’s biggest drug dealers move their cocaine ashore and we don’t have the resources to police our shores and stop them. Dublin is also over-run with both Russian and Chinese spies battling to get a digital edge on the US tech firms based here.
Various European neighbours are extremely worried about our total lack of security and the constant downgrading of our military forces.
They see us as Europe’s weak link from a military point of view and as a sitting duck. The Government ordered a Commission of Enquiry into the future of our permanent defence forces.
The report was published with a big hullabaloo several months ago and the cabinet was told they would have to spend three billion a year over the next decade to bring our military into the modern world with 3,000 extra staff, 12 ships and the purchase of fighter jets.
Since then the Government has done little or nothing except increase the defence budget by just €400million.
They made a song and dance about buying primary radar but it is going to take them ages to get it because they have to go through a process apparently, all nonsense. It is time ministers woke up and realised our country is under threat and gave the military the money they need.
There should be no excuses, no time wasting, no ducking and diving.
A career in the military is a great job. New recruits will join if they are paid properly and appreciated.
But why would they want to join a force that is constantly being undermined by civil servants and the cabinet? Attitudes at the top table when it comes to defence must change before it is too late.
There is a reason why the Russians have one of their biggest embassies in the world in Dublin and it is not for the good of their health. It is time when it comes to defence we began living in the real world.