Is it time to join Nato

The left and their friends in the ultra-left don't do irony, do they? Just saying as I have been reading some of their posts here with some degree of amusement.

NATO is like it or not fast becoming an essential part of Europe's defence and Ireland will need to step up to the plate in that regard.

Ireland does not need to spend crazy money on defence but we can spend enough be assembled specialist units that can be deployed in the event of them being needed. Cyber units, drones operators, counter-terror units. Rapid reaction battalions. Some of them can double up as emergency rescue units in the event of natural disasters. That would be in regard to Europe as a whole.

Just my two pennies worth here.

Has there though? I remember ten years ago there were calls to scrap the government jet as if ministers should be taking a Ryanair flight to EU meetings. That is the level of maturity we have in relation to this stuff.

One can do both. There is nothing stopping other NATO members from offering the UN troops in peacekeeping.

There were some good points made though about the Triple-Lock in deploying troops, where essentially the permanent members of the UN security council can veto where we deploy troops. Essentially Russia, China and your friends the UK, can tell us where we cannot deploy troops.

If one was a truly neutral nation, it would purely be up to us and no one else.

We ve had troops on peacekeeping/peace enforcement missions under NATO and it hasn't changed anything.

From personal experience I preferred NATO missions as there was always a sense that they had your back unlike UN missions.

From a personal view, I never felt we as a country were truly neutral. Whether we like it or not we are aligned, we buy Western equipment for the military,are part of the EU, are part of the EU battlegroup programme, and our social and political stances are clear.

If we were truly neutral then we would have to have the capacity to enforce this policy, would have to pull back from a lot of the roles we have in a global society.

We are more correctly militarily non aligned, but with a clear leaning.

No argument on our neutrality being watered down.

An Irish peacekeeping mission must comply with a triple lock approval: from the UN, The government, and the Dáil. Some of those missions have been led by NATO of which we are not a part.

Essentially foreign powers like the UK, China and Russia have the same say in how we use our military as the Dail does.

If both arms of our state say yes, but the Brits or the Russians say no, you are OK with that? Not much of a Republican I guess ;)

You know what I am talking about. Feigned ignorance won't get you off the hook.

I don't. Other than a penchant for taunting about Britain what is that post about?

The Brits, the Russians and the Chinese have a veto on how we use our defence forces. You seem OK with that.

That's part and parcel of being in the UN, the top 5 have a veto. Are you only finding this out now?

No, that's part and parcel of us having the triple lock.

I would remove it and let the Dail and Government decide what our defence forces are to be used for. Surely you agree?