Sir, - Since Colm Doyle (October 30th) finds my previous letter on cost of arming our Defence Forces "perplexing", I would like the opportunity to clarify a few points.
The point I made in relation to "interoperability" was that it is a condition of membership of NATO's PfP that it is evidently going to cost significant amounts of money, and that the decision to join was taken without the approval of the Irish people. In fact, at the time when the Government pushed through a vote in the Dail, polls showed that 68 per cent of people wanted the referendum which had been promised.
The crucial point about the distinguished service undertaken by our Defence Forces overseas is that it was done under the auspices of the United Nations. It is clear now that the reason for the significantly increased military expenditure is because we are preparing to take up our positions in the European Rapid Reaction Force alongside our new partner agency - NATO.
Mr Doyle is offended by my observation that the Defence Forces obviously didn't deem it necessary to engage in this kind of expenditure and re-armament while a war took place on this island for the past 30 years or so. It would have made more sense to my mind if they had done so in such a context. Needless to say, I too would have wished that the lives of the 3,000 or more people who have died could have been saved - if the perpetrators of the Omagh bombing or the Dublin/ Monaghan bombings, for example, had been frustrated and their dastardly deeds prevented. But is Mr Doyle suggesting that by arming our Defence Forces now we can somehow retrospectively offer protection to these people?
The real obscenity is that tens of thousands of people die daily of hunger in our world while our Government fails to meet its minimum requirements under the UN aid target - yet can easily find £250 million to purchase military equipment, at least some of which seems to be for more than peacekeeping purposes.
Surely Ireland has something better to offer to the world than to become a late entrant in the international arms trade! And it is disturbing, too, that the Government can so easily, and without reference to the people, enter into partnership with an outdated legacy of the Cold War, a military alliance which boasts a first-strike nuclear policy.
Nor is this nuclear capacity an abstract concept, given that NATO forces have used a form of nuclear weaponry - depleted uranium - in the recent bombing of Serbia. The effects of this on the people of Yugoslavia have yet to be seen (though we have a good idea, based on its effects on the people of Iraq) - and, indeed, possibly, on foreign soldiers, including Irish, who are serving in the region.
I regard these as perfectly reasonable points to make and consider the ascription of such pejorative terms as "sinister" no challenge to them. - Yours, etc.,
Joe Murray, Afri, Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6.