To be helpful to the House, the following has been pointed out to me and is worth mentioning. There are already quite strict limitations in law on the roles and functions for which the Defence Forces can be deployed overseas. If you look at the 2006 Act, under section 3, it is quite clear on this: (1) A contingent or member of the Permanent Defence Force may, with the prior approval of and on the authority of the Government, be despatched for service outside the State for the purposes of— ( a ) carrying out duties …

We are taking in many more than 500, I am glad to say.

I know the Senator is aware of how peacekeeping missions actually work but it is important to put on the record that, first, we do not decide on the mandate of UN missions. The UN decides on it. We influence that through the UN process. In fact, we have been very successful at influencing a slight change in the mandate of our largest mission, that is, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, over the summer months to allow UNIFIL to be more proactive in assisting the Lebanese armed forces, which are und…

I am not saying the Senator is opposing it. I am just outlining the steps that are taken for anybody who is listening. The suggestion seems to have been made that we need to have an Oireachtas check and balance over a delegation we have given for many years. We are now simply putting in good legislation for the practice that currently takes place. The Senator said repeatedly that Irish people and the Oireachtas are very proud of the role that Irish peacekeepers have held for many decades. I am glad they are because…

Can the Senator give me an example? I am trying to understand what the concern is here. What kinds of missions is the Senator concerned about in places where we currently have a presence?

We did not have a mandate; there was no mandate.

There was no formal arrangement; that was the problem.

I want to make a final point. First, we are involved in Operation Sophia and we have Defence Forces personnel - I believe there are three of them; certainly, there are two naval officers - in the headquarters of the operation. The reason we do not have a ship in the Mediterranean is that we do not have the crewing resources and so on to do so right now. Unfortunately, some of our ships are tied up because of the challenges posed by staffing numbers in the Naval Service. That is something we are working on fixing. W…

I will read my written response to these amendments but also respond verbally to Senator Higgins. I understand the point she is making but there are other roles to be considered. For example, we have a military representative in Brussels and in New York. We can have a military representative to the OSCE. These representatives are not on humanitarian missions. I can second someone to an organisation for many different reasons, potentially, including to try to influence policy, for example. That could be the women, p…

So does the UN.

If the Senator takes some of the organisations I mentioned previously - NATO, the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, the African Union, SADC, ASEAN - they are all organisations that have at different times been involved with NATO on certain projects but currently, as far as I know, probably are not. Perhaps one or two of them are, but most of them are not. We do have to ensure that we can work with credible international organisations when the case is justifiable. Let me give an example of working w…

When the Senator previously mentioned NATO, she mentioned it in the context that it is an organisation we should never be working with.

We can agree on that.

How is NATO different? If we were considering this while NATO was working under a UN mandate on a project in Afghanistan, under the Senator's amendment, NATO would have been an organisation we could work with. However, under the Senator's proposed amendment, as soon as that UN mandate is over we could no longer work with NATO.

How does that make sense? The organisation does not change.

We are talking about-----

Sorry. We are talking about seconding people here.

I am listening to Senator Higgins. However, let us not layer in the issues around delegation of command to force commanders with the issues of secondments into international organisations, whether it is the African Union, the European Union, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, or whoever. These are entirely different issues. We have had good debate with a delegation from the Minister around what it means to operate with a force commander. It is good to have had that discussion. However, …

I take that point. I may be exaggerating for effect to make a point. However, that scenario could be interpreted by the Senator's amendments. I know she makes a distinction between sending a contingent of Defence Forces personnel on a peacekeeping mission, or an intervention mission of some sort, with postings. The wording of the Senator's proposed amendments, however, do not make that distinction. From an Irish perspective, there are a lot of checks and balances. The idea that I would send a contingent of Defence …

As the Senator noted, the Asgard II sank in 2008. The Government subsequently decided that the national sail training scheme operated by Coiste an Asgard would be discontinued, as recommended in the report of the special group on public service numbers and expenditure programmes. Significant capital and ongoing costs are associated with investing in a national sail training vessel and a detailed analysis would be required prior to any new Exchequer funding being committed. The Department of Defence provides funding…