Is it time to join Nato

Imagine the Shinners in power sending an aggressive force into the north.

Who is deranged?

Wrong again. At the time, the De Valera government was foolish enough to consider that the threat might be real.

The threat was never real, the risk was considered small but exaggerated reactions from poor politicians made more of it.

Is this like your contention that the Shinners had a ceiling of support around 18-19%? Forgive me but I am not buying anymore of your snake-oil.

Why would it require a stretch of the imagination?

Do you think if the Shinners were in power in '69 we would have sat idly by?

Yourself and mark completely destroyed your own argument when you towed the Neale Richmond/Varadkar line on NATO and Neutrality

We can close that door now IMO. The Irish public have repudiated that mission (the polls show opposition to joining NATO has actually grown) almost as comprehensively as they repudiated the proposed black and tan love-in.

I can't follow anymore. Joining NATO, what's the risk/reward? I don't see the risk being worth the reward personally. Military is ridiculously expensive, pulls from your workforce, leads to mental and physical injury and death and into long term conflict with other countries. What would we get out of it? Slightly higher chance of support in case of an unlikely invasion and we can feel like great lads for not letting others fight for our geo political interests. Not worth it in my opinion.

Icelandic approach is very favourable for Ireland if things look to be getting nasty.

Do we need to join now... no..

Should it be discussed so we're not caught flat footed... yes..

The funny thing is, Ireland have probably contributed to almost all major NATO/Coalition/whatever nickname you want to give the west under the UN or European banner... more than Iceland have/probably will for the foreseeable.

Most recently notable are Afghanistan, where they were present in a training function for counter IED and Anti ordinance work, and also Mali on a full Peace enforcing mission basis (bearing in mind, this was area with Wagner group positions).

Iceland contribute with the location of Keflavik NAS, and endpoints for the SOSUS (or whatever their new name is) arrays...

In reality, Ireland could make it work for them, where they only contribute forces as they already have, with the concession of allowing more use of Irish facilities (tech sector/ airfields etc.. which, lets face it, is already in use in that way) ...

good to see that the people realise that joining nato would bring no rewards for plenty of risk.

the people do not want it as it guarantees nothing for a hell of a lot of risk and expectation.

when there is something worth discussing about it then i have no doubt that discussion will happen, but while it isn't worth as a country discussing nato membership then we are better off focusing on current issues that are actually effecting us.

They got off lightly. In other countries they could have been shot or they might have had to remain in exile.

No country/army can reward or turn a blind eye to desertion for obvious reasons.

There are so many steps before we would be in danger, its such a tiny risk at this point. I mean I would expect all of mainland europe to be in the hands of russia before an invasion would be imminent and I don't see how they could pull that off, they'd be lucky to make it past Poland even if they went all in. I'm not seeing the risk reward at all.

I know you don't like polls where you are wrong, but the people seem to think, by a large majority that joining NATO is NOT the right thing to do.

That's where you hole these guys like Richmond and Varadkar below the water, they aren't interested in human rights at all, they are only interested in human rights when it is fashionable or their own kind. No interest when rights are abused here or in other places.

We are in a club with other EU countries, sharing sovereignty, we should also defend that club.

Maybe I haven't been paying attention but I don't remember the EU having sovereignty in its own right, nor us having a mutual defense pact with the EU. If we democratically decide to do that, then I wont complain but I wouldn't be in favour.