There’s no defence for leaving country vulnerable to attack
IT’S weird, given our history and the state of the world right now, that we do not take our national security seriously.
We have never funded our Defence Forces properly. We have a proud history of serving the UN and Irishmen and women have shown skill, expertise and bravery in some of the most difficult spots on the planet, sometimes paying the ultimate price for peace.
But we don’t pay our personnel anywhere near enough, in reality, they are almost on poverty-level pay.
And despite being a wealthy country (wealthy enough to try and turn down €13billion in taxes from Apple) we have an almost laughably under-equipped Navy, Air Force and Army.
Our Naval Service is mostly tied up in harbour. The world watched a couple of years ago as it was basically left up to our fishing fleet to put manners on the Russians menacing our country off our coast.
There’s this weird belief that because we are
THERE’S lads walking around in shorts and T-shirts over the Bank Holiday weekend – it could be snowing by the end of the week. Climate change is real and it’s weird.
an island, and because we don’t have to worry about the Vikings or the Saxons any more (well, at least the Vikings, you’d never know what them treacherous English would be up to) we don’t have to worry about invasion.
Pub bores will say: “Sure what do we need an Army or a Navy for? Who’s going to try and invade us”.
Well, we definitely need a strong Navy for starters because threats come in many different ways, to predators after our natural resources, to our communications and to our security from everybody from drug cartels to people traffickers.
There’s talk of introducing a form of national service and we should seriously consider it. Many of the Baltic and Nordic countries have it, because they take their national security very seriously indeed.
The Finns beat the living daylights out of the Russians during the Winter War of 1939 and they’ll be ready if Putin or his cronies try that stuff on again.
Service may not be for all young people – but there are ways that they could do something for their country, learn a lot about life and get practical training in a whole range of skills.
Those who don’t want to go into the Defence Forces could do some sort of national service in their communities.
But for starters – we have to start paying our Defence Forces personnel a proper wage and start paying for the equipment they need to properly protect us.
We live in a dangerous world and it looks like it’s going to be that way for some time. We’d be foolish to think we’re untouchable here on our island.