Fintan O’Toole: We are the most land-lubbing of island peoples

No offence to the Jolly Jack and Jacqueline Tars of the Irish Naval Service. But whatever persuaded the Russians to hold their war games outside Ireland’s Exclusive Economic Zone, it sure wasn’t them. Village People floating towards the Russians on a cabin cruiser miming to In the Navy would have done more to put the wind up Ivan.

Perhaps, given that one of our nine vessels is called after Samuel Beckett, we hope to ward off maritime space invaders by driving them into such existential despair that they just lie on their bunks contemplating the absurdity of it all. Or maybe the LE Bernard Shaw could have torpedoed the Marshal Ustinov with armour-piercing sallies of wit.

There is, admittedly, no conceivable Irish navy that could ever take on a serious Russian flotilla, even if it were engaged in directly hostile actions like cutting the undersea communication cables that link Europe to America. Attempting to build such a capacity would be folly.

We barely have a naval ship with a big enough mast from which to fly an impressive white flag

It is remarkable, nonetheless, that a wealthy island-based State can’t even put up a credible show of monitoring the Russian war games. We barely have a naval ship with a big enough mast from which to fly an impressive white flag.

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland is no longer Catholic. Why are our schools?

---

Fintan O’Toole: Every woman walks around with a mental Geiger counter; no man does

---

Fintan O’Toole: Five things we learned from the pandemic

---

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland would not be viable without 10 big US corporations

---

This sense of vulnerability leads, inevitably, to calls that Ireland should join Nato and/or vastly increase its defence budget. Before we jump to such conclusions, however, we really need to think about something deeper and stranger: our collective capacity not to see the sea.

Land-lubber nation

Ireland’s marine territory covers 880,000sq km, an area more than 10 times the landmass of the State. Yet we are the most land-lubbing of island peoples.

It’s not just that we have a navy of nine boats, three of which are effectively clapped out. It’s that we traded our fishing industry for concessions on agriculture when we joined the EU; that the State recklessly liquidated its deep-sea merchant marine arm, Irish Shipping, in 1984; and that we even abandoned manned lighthouses in 1997.

There’s a pattern here: a consistent lack of interest in the oceanic vastness in which we sit. The sea for most of us is the Irish Sea. We know a lot more about the Red Cow Roundabout and the Monasterevin Bypass than we do about the Porcupine Seabight or the Goban Spur, which is essentially Rock-all.

Perhaps we should be grateful to Vladimir Putin for forcing us to think about this. But even as he does so, much of the public debate gets sidetracked into discourse about the alleged need for a much bigger military.

Ireland is unique among North Atlantic countries in having no ability to fly helicopters at sea out of range of land

Some of this is sensible, but some is based on false analogies. Comparing the size of the Irish army to that of other European neutral states is misleading. Finland, for example, has 2,273km of border to patrol, much of it with Russia. It needs a much bigger army than a country with a non-hostile Border of 500km.

Nor should we fixate on the incapacity of the Air Corps to patrol our own airspace. It would be vastly too expensive to create and maintain a real air force. Better to admit that the RAF does that job.

Lack of clout

But the state of the navy is a different crate of fish to these red herrings. We must be able to control fisheries and to intercept smugglers and to have a sovereign presence in our own waters. We can’t continue to ignore these obligations.

Here, the international comparisons really are valid, and they are startling. The current effective strength of the Irish Navy is about the same as that of Iceland, which has the population of Co Cork.

The Icelandic coastguard, moreover, has helicopter-equipped offshore patrol vessels. These are basic tools of the job. Ireland is unique among North Atlantic countries in having no ability to fly helicopters at sea out of range of land.

In the whole of the Irish defence forces there are eight helicopters. Of other neutral countries of similar size, Austria has 61, Finland 39 and New Zealand 21. And it is worth repeating that none of Ireland's can operate very far out at sea because they can't land and take off from our naval vessels.

This indifference comes wrapped in magical thinking. Ten years ago, when the government published a grandiose strategy called Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth, there was much talk of “reconnecting to the sea” and “our maritime identity”.

But this maritime identity is as thin as a slice of sushi. Most urban dwellers think more about marinades than about mariners.

And the real place of our 880,000sq km of salt water in the political order can be judged by the fact that the last time we had a standalone minister for the marine was in 1997 – since then the office has been a fiddly adjunct, variously, to natural resources, the environment, communications and agriculture. It has all the institutional clout of a desiccated sardine.

The vast sea we claim as ours is the Great Blue Yonder of the Irish imagination. We bless our little navy and all who sail in it and wish them luck in keeping an eye on Russia from up there in the crow’s nest – or whatever it is they have on ships these days.