The joke is on us really. Joe Jacob is still a junior minister and we, the Irish people are still, and have always been, without an adequate level of national planning or protection in the event of a serious national disaster.
While many good regional disaster plans exist and have been practised, Mr Jacob has demonstrated that, at national level, chaos prevails. There was an initial flurry of activity following the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and some attempts to put minimal precautions in place after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, when radioactive fallout fell on several locations in Ireland.
Mr Jacob has portrayed himself, and been portrayed by Mr Ahern, as an established expert on nuclear preparedness, even if he knows very little about the other ingredients in the nuclear, biological and chemical warfare cocktail.
We are being assured that the biological and chemical threats to Ireland are minimal and that if we had a nuclear or radiation threat, well sure, how could anyone be expected to cope with that anyway. Just close your doors and windows and turn off your ventilation systems, and wait for Government help to arrive.
We are told there are special nuclear bunkers for the Government (Mr Jacob and Mr Ahern) and for the emergency services in Athlone and 32 other centres. None of this is quite true.
The greatest threat to the Irish people does not come from terrorism, globally or within the island of Ireland. It comes from Sellafield, just across the Irish Sea, which is already the most radioactive sea in the world.
This danger is constant and growing and many people on both sides of the Irish Sea have probably already died because of a fire at Sellafield (then Windscale) in 1957, numerous leaks of radioactive material in the meantime, and the ongoing approved dumping of radioactive waste material into the sea by its waste-water outlets.
The terrorist threats to the Western world from some Islamic fundamentalists did raise the level of threat to Ireland somewhat, and there are reports that Sellafield may have been, and may still be, on their secondary target list. Our lack of preparedness for a nuclear disaster is much deeper than most people realise.
The Republic of Ireland has no air defence at all. Our Air Corps has no interceptor aircraft. Indeed, apart from the Government executive jet and the fishery patrol aircraft, we have no military aircraft.
As a result of this, it may have been necessary to invite the RAF to defend our airspace against possible terrorist attack, or the British government may have demanded this, due to the threat to Sellafield.
If either has been the case, then successive governments, but especially the present one, must shoulder the blame for virtually decommissioning the Defence Forces, thereby leaving the Irish people exposed to terrorism, from within as well as from without. Neutrality does impose a duty to defend the country's citizens, as well as not endangering neighbouring countries by our lack of defence.
There are also other serious aspects to our lack of preparedness for nuclear, biological or chemical threats.
The 32 so-called nuclear bunkers/communications centres, are not all they are cracked up to be. Many of them may actually be cracked up, for example, the government bunker in Athlone, which is located in the basement of a 19th-century building in Costume military barracks. These old buildings have been cosmetically modified, but in many cases are neither fireproof nor bombproof, and are vulnerable to attack by aircraft, military or civilian.
The first essential for a Government emergency bunker is the secrecy of its location. Yet the dogs in the street know where Ireland's bunker is located. But then, the Government may have no way of getting to Athlone, apart possibly from Mary O'Rourke. It is likely that there are no vehicles in the Republic of Ireland capable of moving safely through a contaminated area.
In 1970, when the Defence Forces were purchasing 12 Scorpion reconnaissance vehicles (light tanks), they should have come equipped as standard with nuclear, biological and chemical filtering kits which would have enabled their crews to operate safely for considerable periods in contaminated zones.
However, a civil servant in the Department of Defence vetoed the inclusion of such filters, because of the word nuclear. People might think we were buying nuclear equipment! It actually cost an additional £48,000 to have the filters removed from these 12 vehicles before purchase.
In the early 1980s, about a year before the Chernobyl disaster, I, as officer commanding the First Tank Squadron, recommended that these filters should be purchased and retro-fitted. I cited the risk of an accident at Sellafield as one of the justifications. The recommendation was rejected.
Mr Jacob's recommendation that in the event of a Sellafield disaster people should stay in their homes is also flawed. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 released over 10 times the amount of radiation than that released by Hiroshima.
A major disaster at Sellafield could release much more than 10 times the radiation released by Chernobyl. If the wind was from an easterly direction, serious fallout could be dumped on Ireland within hours.
The most urgent requirement would be to evacuate, in northerly and southerly directions, all town and villages in the immediate path of the fallout. Staying locked up in your home could be fatal.
If this is the best that Ireland as a sovereign state can do to protect its citizens, then perhaps we should be prepared to surrender both our sovereignty and our neutrality back to Britain.
Edward Horgan served with the Defence Forces from 1968 to 1983 when he retired with the rank of Commandant. He is a member of the national executive of PANA, the Peace and Neutrality Alliance.