Ireland defends nothing, its unarmed neutrality is ‘balderdash’

Ireland is an anomaly inside an absurdity wrapped in an incongruity. It is now the richest country per capita in the EU and the one least interested defending anything that is of value to the EU. Its “navy” has now a single functioning patrol vessel, but because of chronic – the brutally honest would say “criminally lazy”– shortcomings in funding, this wretched little tub can carry no weapons. Advertising for naval recruits is underway, but mostly in Irish, which almost nobody speaks any more, and directed largely at teenage girls, who are as likely to become sailors in the Irish Navy as are one-legged steeplejacks.  Yet aside from France, Ireland has the largest sea-area to defend in the EU, nearly 900,000 square kilometres, which includes the submarine cable-junctures that are vital for Ireland and the rest of Europe. These are close to the Irish shores, yet what does Ireland to protect them? 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Ireland has no submarine warfare capacity, no underwater detection technology and no real plans to crash-develop either. Talk, yes: deeds, oh very good idea, but let’s form a committee first. It is a near-run thing which is worse, the Irish Naval Service or the Irish Air Corps, for the latter is now close to shutting up shop completely. With five Air Corps air traffic controllers leaving for the private sector this week, the entire arm is just two defections away from complete closure. However, since an air corps with roughly two functional aircraft and no radar defences is not a military asset but an expensive little hobby, the Irish Air Corps is already functionally dead. 

How is the Irish Government grappling with this existential crisis three years after Russia warned Europe what might befall a country that did not take its defence seriously? By mass-recruiting large numbers of mechanics, pilots and cadets, and massively investing in combat aircraft and technological infrastructure? No. It has chosen to rename the now-defunct Air Corps an “Air Force”. 

Well, leaders of backward countries everywhere are slapping their foreheads in a frenzy of disbelief, crying, “Why didn’t we think of that?”  The Bey of Algeria should announce that the million square miles of sand to the south is now to be called Lake Sahara, and by that same edict, legions of burka-clad mermaids will routinely perform the Dance of the Seven Pails, while juicy salmon linger voluptuously offshore, just longing to be caught. Iceland could now rename itself Riceland, feeding the world, and Somalia could rename itself Sodomia, with delightful habits to match. 

Hallucination as policy is not a passing Irish delusion but is now deep-dyed into the culture of the Ireland’s Defence Forces, (Óglaigh Na hÉireann in Irish) so enabling them to announce recently, without the assistance of any mind-altering drugs, though aided by a liberal scatter of ungrammatical capital letters, its “Vision for 2030”.

Óglaigh Na hÉireann will be a joint, agile and fit-for-purpose military force, postured to Defend our sovereignty, protect Irish citizens, and secure Ireland’s interests. This will be achieved by: Transforming our culture, modernising our force to have the capability to deter threats across multi-domain operational environments; Valuing and respecting our people’s dignity, empowering them to ‘Be More’, and delivering exciting and fulfilling careers for all who serve. Realising our Vision will allow us to: Defend Our State, Transform Our Forces, Value Our People.

In other words, balderdash. This multi-domain posture to Defend is as realistic as Chad’s designs on Pluto, which few Irish people believe and absolutely nobody is prepared to pay for. However, Ireland (about the same size as Denmark, which has both a fully functional navy and air force) knows how to babble obligingly whenever asked to abide by its military undertakings. It also knows how to infuse its electorate with an inner glow of holiness by referring to its traditional policy of “neutrality” and its “internationally acclaimed” record as a peacekeeper. Both are completely valueless, but whenever such unprincipled sanctimony is challenged, the Irish government points a quivering finger accusingly at Israel, a tactic that invariably works, especially when linked with the word “genocide”.   The clinching card is then played – Lebanon. That the Irish Army has been “peacekeeping” there for nearly half a century, during which time that pitiful, wretched place has remorselessly turned into a pustular locus of permanent, internecine murderousness, seems not to have disenchanted the Irish government with the prospect of its soldiers serving another futile fifty years there.

It is not just in matters of defence that Ireland is failing in its duties as a member of the European Union, with the emphasis on that final word: UNION. By law, the EU does not ask but commands its member states to make their populations cover the costs of a water-supply on a pay-for-usage principle. However, after one hundred thousand people took part in a rally in Dublin opposing water-charges, the Irish government under prime minister (taoiseach) Leo Varadkar heroically capitulated to the mob. It thereafter abandoned any notion of a pay-for-usage principle, instead choosing to cover all water-costs itself. So wanton householders who leave their taps sluicing into the drains all day pay the same as those frugal souls who winch them tightly shut at even a hint of a drip, ie, nothing. This is not a social contract but a recipe for fiscal and anti-social anarchy, which one day will probably result in a multi-billion fine by the European Commission.

That is not the only regard in which Ireland declines to accept the norms and the practices of the EU. Its extraordinary prosperity is based on its ability to lure multinational companies to set up European bases in its territory, partly by the fact that it is English-speaking and within the EU (as in practice are the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark) but it also charges lower levels of corporation tax. This is largely possible because Irish corporation tax policies are apparently encoded in a complex language understood solely by the high-tech geniuses in Silicon Valley and the wily leprechauns inside the Irish Department of Finance. Not even the polyglots of the European Commission have been able to crack this mystery-lingo, which as well as being impenetrable to outsiders also bewitches EC financial-regulators into hapless and fawning docility. This means that Ireland has been running a vast global tax-scam at the expense of the rest of the world. No doubt Trump will smite this fraud, but when? Or have the leprechauns got to him as well?

Water might appear to be free in Ireland, (untrue, of course) but speech is emphatically not. Last week in Dublin, the IRA and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams won a libel action against the BBC for alleging that he had authorised the murder of an informer. Adams’ personal record probably makes Lavrentiy Beria seem like St Bernadette of Lourdes, so his legal team chose to fight the case in Dublin, which is in the Republic even though the broadcast emanated from Belfast, which is in the United Kingdom. They did so because A) the BBC has a legal presence in the Republic through local re-transmission agreements and B) because his team clearly believed that a southern Irish jury would be more likely to favour Adams, which proved to be 100 per cent correct. The outcome? €100,000 damages and a legal bill for the BBC forty times that sum. In other words, this verdict has been as deadly for free speech about the IRA as the Dublin government’s delinquency towards its military obligations has been to the EU’s defence.  

So, from the Vistula to the Aegean and reaching deep across the Atlantic, there is one state that consistently breaks both the spirit of the EU and its laws. Ireland is not so much an outlier as an out and out liar, one that will ignore any rule to which it appeared to have assented once it discovers that it can away with not adhering to.  Military radar? Non-existent. Cable-protection? Cable, shtable. Free speech? Not about the IRA. Fisheries protection? We’ll form a fisheries committee, possibly even soon. Tax?  Handy for keeping carpets in place. Defence? Something to sit on. And permanent derogations from EU regulations? Oh, yes please!

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist, author and broadcaster. He has reported on the wars in Northern Ireland, where he worked throughout the 1970s, Beirut and Bosnia.