The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, described the publication of his Department's White Paper yesterday as a momentous event for all concerned. It has certainly occasioned unprecedented public attention, stimulated by open disagreements over budgets, numbers of troops and equipment, between the Minister, his Department and military leaders. Although the document launched yesterday certainly does not resolve all these conflicts, it goes a considerable way to meet the objections made. The restoration of full trust between the Department and the military will depend crucially on how the White Paper is rewritten and implemented.
The package represents a complex trade-off between the cuts demanded by the Departments of Finance and Defence to fund re-equipment, and the strong case made by the Chief of Staff that it would be self-defeating to reduce the number of armed forces personnel below levels capable of sustaining their mandate and new international roles. While the numbers are to be reduced from 11,500 to 10,500, negotiations in recent days have agreed on an option for the Chief of Staff to recruit another 250 troops and to give him operational control over the recruitment process. It has also been agreed to allocate 100 per cent of the annual savings from restructuring and property sales to re-equipment.
Mr Smith has shown himself willing to meet comprehensive demands for re-equipping in order to prepare the armed forces for new roles overseas, to compensate for a long history of under-provision and to catch up with equivalent forces elsewhere in Europe. This is an expensive business, especially since most of the international operations facing the armed forces in future will be financed by taxpayers here, even if they are mandated by the United Nations as is required by Irish law. Mr Smith's pledge on behalf of the Government that these numbers and this formula will not be revisited for 10 years, should bring much greater certainty to budgetary and operational planning.
Some of these agreements reached between Mr Smith and the Chief of Staff, Lieut Gen Stapleton, came so late that they are not actually included in the text of the White Paper. They are to be incorporated in a final draft. This is an unorthodox procedure; but if it is used creatively to include final consultations with interested parties, it should allow trust to be rebuilt through greater morale and adaptation to new roles and duties. The White Paper comes at a real turning point in Irish and European security and defence arrangements. It is predicated on relatively benign assumptions about peace and stability on this island which should allow the release of resources for other tasks. Likewise Ireland's long-standing commitment to Unifil is to be re-examined on the assumption that a regional peace agreement between Israel, Syria and Lebanon will bring changes.
The European demands loom much larger in comparison, as the EU intensifies negotiations on a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force and new military-political structures are put in place. At first glance it looks as if sufficient resources are allocated in this White Paper to meet these new demands within the means available to the Government. It will take more political debate and security analysis to determine if that is indeed the case.