Well that makes perfect sense to be fair. I believe in neutrality but in order to have actual neutrality we need to be able to police our own airspace and waters that means an annual spend of ~3b euros are people supportive of that is the real question.
The Irish Times with a crazy take here, it’s 56% of the group who think ireland should change military stance, not 56% of all people surveyd
Very strange how they can get away with that tweet
Historically neutral countries have been able to stay neutral because they have their own capable defense services
Ugh neutrals
This is a good example of a topic on which the average citizen’s opinion is entirely worthless. Almost no one has a scooby what it would take to ‘protect’ these cables or what capability we could bring to bear to do so
> Asked if Ireland should seek help from other countries to protect our undersea internet cables – a mounting concern in Europe and the United States – 48 per cent said we should seek help, with 36 per cent saying we should “use our own Defence Forces”. Three per cent said the cables do not require protection, while 13 per cent said they do not know.
Let me fix that.
Voters who still have landlines and have so much free time that they agree to surveys want to keep neutrality but improve Ireland’s military capacity.
It’s a waste of money.
Nobody’s gonna invade us.
It’s commendable that we provide peacekeeping soldiers to UN and whatnot, but beyond that, it’s a waste.
I’m my honest opinion I enjoy our neutrality I don’t want to go to other countries and fight wars that have nothing to do with us I’ll gladly be a peacekeepers and go on peacekeeping missions but the only fighting I’ll do in a war is on my own land to defend my country
No they don’t this is the true unbiased result of the poll, most are happy with they way we are
I had a mad idea last night. Instead of spending money on second hand navy ships, we should spend money on second hand oil platforms and dot them around our sea area like forts. Then instead of needing one big super expensive radar system, we could have lots of little ones and instead of having to spend everything on a few fast boats, we could get by with lots of slow boats.
Wait, you have a military?
I mean we could probably do with a navy that does more than just watch small irish boats and ignore all the huge industrial boats overfishing our waters even the few big ships aren’t fully manned
Let Nato pay the price of our security like they always have done.
The article used a dishonest and misleading headline to further try to manufacture consent for abandoning neutrality. Irish Times is a joke.
NATO is heading for war, a big one. Probably with Russia, there is a chance that NATO members will get pulled into a war between America and China. Current tensions are forcing Russia and China together, so perhaps it could be some sort of Sino Russian alliance. Who knows?
In any event, it is none of our business, our Military Forces are virtually non-existent and would likely be wiped out in a couple of minutes. Modernising the army would take at least a decade, cost tens of billions and we would still be pretty insignificant. It would be foolish for all is to get involved and make ourselves and nuclear target, all so our idiot politicians can get international brownie points, pats on the head and twitter likes.
I am all for defending and investing in protecting our borders and the area around them, but sending our people to fight and die thousands of miles away at the behest of some unelected foreign bureaucrat makes no sense.
If we join NATO we are effectively giving up control over the nation’s foreign policy and thus a substantial amount of sovereignty. Although so much of that has already been gifted to the EU.
We shouldn’t join NATO, that much most agree on. We should keep neutrality, again I think most Irish people value this.
I think these 2 things basically make it necessary for Ireland to have a capable military. Just observing other European states they are armed to the teeth and beyond even some of their NATO counterparts. They do this because they want to be able to protect their neutrality and autonomy.
We’re lucky in a lot of ways, we’re on the edge of Europe on an island with little to no immediate threats on our borders, and we have no openly hostile relations with any other government. So we don’t need to go mad, just make the necessary upgrades to reflect what we need in a modern context. But I think with the current state of defence we’re kind of taking the piss a little. We rely on Britain to protect our skies and we just assume western nations, EU/US will step in if anything seriously bad happens.
Also it’s not mentioned all too much but militaries are an institution that cannot just have more money thrown at it one day and suddenly become more capable. It needs to be built up over years and maintained properly for years. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about here but why do we even have what we have now if we couldn’t even reliably put up a fight against poorer nations than our own?
Thats my thought process on it anyway even if it is bollocks.
I don’t think Ireland should join NATO, at least, certainly not for the moment.
But we are indisputably NATO alliances and IMO we should prepare for the possibility that someday we might join NATO, whether that be voluntarily or by necessity.
That would entail at a bare minimum having some capacity in critical areas like cyber security, heavy lift capacity, radar detection and things like that.
At the moment the DF are just glorified peacekeepers used to curry favour internationally. We can’t even get our own troops around the world without relying on the graciousness of other countries or private charters, we can’t detect submarines in our waters, we can’t detect airplanes in our skies and we can’t protect our infrastructure from cyber attacks.
We are so woefully unprepared for basically anything beyond flood relief and having a limited source of bodies to throw at a problem.
Having at least the barest possible minimum capabilities in critical areas is just good sense and planning should the worst ever come to pass.
And before anyone jumps down my throat for saying we should significantly increasing funding to the DF, I’m not for a moment suggesting we need to splurge on unnecessary things like MBTs or jet powered craft or anything like that.
*”SHOCK as Irish people continue to want the same simple thing now that they’ve wanted for the last 100 years”*
unbelievable levels of attempted social engineering over the *lets deliver ireland’s budget into the hands of the US military* initiative. Micheal Martins tongue must be fucking exhausted from all the tut tutting he’s doing
I’d support this if it wasn’t the case that literally every single public service in this country is in absolute shambles…
What a joke.
If we had a strong military Fine Gael would immediately surrender it the control of British terrorists.
Considering there’s a very real possibility in the future we will have to deal with Loyalist terrorism we definitely need to increase police and military capacity and capabilities
24 comments
Well that makes perfect sense to be fair. I believe in neutrality but in order to have actual neutrality we need to be able to police our own airspace and waters that means an annual spend of ~3b euros are people supportive of that is the real question.
An actually sensible position, I am surprised!
[Irish Times/Ipsos poll: 56 per cent of people surveyed think Ireland should join Nato. This is 7 per cent lower than last year, perhaps indicating an increased fear of the alliance being pulled into the war in Ukraine, writes Conor Gallagher](https://twitter.com/IrishTimes/status/1670076433610186755?t=feCA16vJ0gr9AbLZvJ0Xdg&s=19)
The Irish Times with a crazy take here, it’s 56% of the group who think ireland should change military stance, not 56% of all people surveyd
Very strange how they can get away with that tweet
Historically neutral countries have been able to stay neutral because they have their own capable defense services
Ugh neutrals
This is a good example of a topic on which the average citizen’s opinion is entirely worthless. Almost no one has a scooby what it would take to ‘protect’ these cables or what capability we could bring to bear to do so
> Asked if Ireland should seek help from other countries to protect our undersea internet cables – a mounting concern in Europe and the United States – 48 per cent said we should seek help, with 36 per cent saying we should “use our own Defence Forces”. Three per cent said the cables do not require protection, while 13 per cent said they do not know.
Let me fix that.
Voters who still have landlines and have so much free time that they agree to surveys want to keep neutrality but improve Ireland’s military capacity.
It’s a waste of money.
Nobody’s gonna invade us.
It’s commendable that we provide peacekeeping soldiers to UN and whatnot, but beyond that, it’s a waste.
I’m my honest opinion I enjoy our neutrality I don’t want to go to other countries and fight wars that have nothing to do with us I’ll gladly be a peacekeepers and go on peacekeeping missions but the only fighting I’ll do in a war is on my own land to defend my country
No they don’t this is the true unbiased result of the poll, most are happy with they way we are
[https://twitter.com/NiamhbWalshe/status/1670092436016701440](https://twitter.com/NiamhbWalshe/status/1670092436016701440)
I had a mad idea last night. Instead of spending money on second hand navy ships, we should spend money on second hand oil platforms and dot them around our sea area like forts. Then instead of needing one big super expensive radar system, we could have lots of little ones and instead of having to spend everything on a few fast boats, we could get by with lots of slow boats.
Wait, you have a military?
I mean we could probably do with a navy that does more than just watch small irish boats and ignore all the huge industrial boats overfishing our waters even the few big ships aren’t fully manned
Let Nato pay the price of our security like they always have done.
The article used a dishonest and misleading headline to further try to manufacture consent for abandoning neutrality. Irish Times is a joke.
NATO is heading for war, a big one. Probably with Russia, there is a chance that NATO members will get pulled into a war between America and China. Current tensions are forcing Russia and China together, so perhaps it could be some sort of Sino Russian alliance. Who knows?
In any event, it is none of our business, our Military Forces are virtually non-existent and would likely be wiped out in a couple of minutes. Modernising the army would take at least a decade, cost tens of billions and we would still be pretty insignificant. It would be foolish for all is to get involved and make ourselves and nuclear target, all so our idiot politicians can get international brownie points, pats on the head and twitter likes.
I am all for defending and investing in protecting our borders and the area around them, but sending our people to fight and die thousands of miles away at the behest of some unelected foreign bureaucrat makes no sense.
If we join NATO we are effectively giving up control over the nation’s foreign policy and thus a substantial amount of sovereignty. Although so much of that has already been gifted to the EU.
We shouldn’t join NATO, that much most agree on. We should keep neutrality, again I think most Irish people value this.
I think these 2 things basically make it necessary for Ireland to have a capable military. Just observing other European states they are armed to the teeth and beyond even some of their NATO counterparts. They do this because they want to be able to protect their neutrality and autonomy.
We’re lucky in a lot of ways, we’re on the edge of Europe on an island with little to no immediate threats on our borders, and we have no openly hostile relations with any other government. So we don’t need to go mad, just make the necessary upgrades to reflect what we need in a modern context. But I think with the current state of defence we’re kind of taking the piss a little. We rely on Britain to protect our skies and we just assume western nations, EU/US will step in if anything seriously bad happens.
Also it’s not mentioned all too much but militaries are an institution that cannot just have more money thrown at it one day and suddenly become more capable. It needs to be built up over years and maintained properly for years. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about here but why do we even have what we have now if we couldn’t even reliably put up a fight against poorer nations than our own?
Thats my thought process on it anyway even if it is bollocks.
I don’t think Ireland should join NATO, at least, certainly not for the moment.
But we are indisputably NATO alliances and IMO we should prepare for the possibility that someday we might join NATO, whether that be voluntarily or by necessity.
That would entail at a bare minimum having some capacity in critical areas like cyber security, heavy lift capacity, radar detection and things like that.
At the moment the DF are just glorified peacekeepers used to curry favour internationally. We can’t even get our own troops around the world without relying on the graciousness of other countries or private charters, we can’t detect submarines in our waters, we can’t detect airplanes in our skies and we can’t protect our infrastructure from cyber attacks.
We are so woefully unprepared for basically anything beyond flood relief and having a limited source of bodies to throw at a problem.
Having at least the barest possible minimum capabilities in critical areas is just good sense and planning should the worst ever come to pass.
And before anyone jumps down my throat for saying we should significantly increasing funding to the DF, I’m not for a moment suggesting we need to splurge on unnecessary things like MBTs or jet powered craft or anything like that.
*”SHOCK as Irish people continue to want the same simple thing now that they’ve wanted for the last 100 years”*
unbelievable levels of attempted social engineering over the *lets deliver ireland’s budget into the hands of the US military* initiative. Micheal Martins tongue must be fucking exhausted from all the tut tutting he’s doing
I’d support this if it wasn’t the case that literally every single public service in this country is in absolute shambles…
What a joke.
If we had a strong military Fine Gael would immediately surrender it the control of British terrorists.
Considering there’s a very real possibility in the future we will have to deal with Loyalist terrorism we definitely need to increase police and military capacity and capabilities