Neutrality is a luxury this State is not prepared to pay for, the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers has said.
Recommending that Ireland subscribe to the Partnership for Peace organisation, RACO said the Swedish style of PfP membership should be adopted. This would allow for full participation in future peacekeeping missions, the organisation says in its draft submission to the Government's White Paper on Defence.
The Naval Service should also be allowed to develop along the lines of the US Coastguard, to ensure that sovereignty over an ecological resource worth £30 billion annually is not surrendered, the submission says.
The draft submission, presented to RACO delegates at their annual conference in Galway yesterday, says neutrality cannot be assumed to be a state's defence policy, or a substitute for it. In fact, neutrality demands "active measures" which this State has, so far, been unwilling to pay for.
The submission, which assumes Ireland will sign up to PfP next year, notes the Republic's future as a contributor to peacekeeping missions may otherwise be in doubt.
The document criticises the current levels proposed under the Defence Forces review implementation plan, and calls for a readjustment which would be similar to ratios in Canada or New Zealand. Currently, a force consisting 51 per cent of privates is not sufficiently skilled to cope with new challenges, the document maintains.
The draft submission recommends a "cadre" system which would facilitate development of skills and training on equipment, and would allow the military organisation to expand threefold if need be. A security threat analysis, which was carried out for the submission, is not published in the draft document for security and diplomatic reasons.
The submission recommends the Air Corps be upgraded and equipped with a small number of relatively modern interceptor aircraft to challenge infringements of sovereignty.
Air Corps delegates told the conference that radar "blackspots" were preventing the detection of drug shipments which might be landed by aircraft.
