"Despite being one of the few non-military contributors to The Irish Times with a longstanding interest in military matters, Kevin Myers's Irishman's Diary of May 20th requires a response on a number of fronts," wrote John Nolan of the Department of Defence recently. An interesting point; well, what other non-military contributors on this subject have there been? John Nolan of the Department of Defence, perhaps?
Still, he has a point when he says that what has happened to the Defence Forces has occurred within a democratic system. This is true. In no party's manifesto over the past 50 years has the issue of defence constituted more than a single paragraph of singular and suffocating sanctimoniousness, usually (but not always) resulting in the most stupid or infirm politicians getting Defence. Once there, they could be relied on to utter eyewash about our brave boys defending our beloved neutrality, for which we were (of course) respected all over the world. Yawn, vomit, wipe.
Foreign diplomats
People who say such things - not merely politicians but also correspondents to the letters page of this newspaper - should talk to some foreign diplomats in this country. They are fascinated by our defence policy. We haven't got one. They are fascinated that this should be a matter of enormous political pride. And they are utterly enraptured by the fact that almost no politician will acknowledge publicly that the only reason Ireland can get away without a defence policy, or even the capacity to defend the front lawn of Leinster House, is that Ireland is situated in the middle of the most militarised zone in the entire world.
We have dressed up our reliance on other people's desire to defend their space (in which we happen to be included) as a form of moral superiority, the mouse on the eagle's back exulting at its loftiness. If the White Paper on Defence has managed one thing, it has started a debate (of a sort) on what our defence policy should be, and what investments we should make to implement that policy.
The same could be said of the visit of the EH101 helicopter on a promotional visit last week. EH Industries might not sell a single helicopter, but at least the presence of the aircraft in Ireland should cause people to ask serious and searching questions about the aircraft with which we should be equipping the Air Corps.
Years of pious parsimony have left the general public ignorant of the price of modern aircraft. The EH101 is expensive. To buy and maintain a single EH101 for 10 years costs as much as say, oh, four houses on Sorrento Terrace, from which residents may in future watch mariners drown off our shores because the State was not prepared to pay to have a proper rescue service. It comes to this: Is our failure as a trading nation to mind the shipping lanes adjoining our shores any less morally delinquent than White Star's failure to supply enough lifeboats on the Titanic?
Rescue helicopters
We need more than maritime rescue helicopters. We need troop carriers. We have the only special forces unit in Europe which must get to a terrorist crisis by ground transport alone, Garda sirens wailing in despair as the entire Rangers Wing vanishes into the black hole that is the traffic jam of Kildare town, never to be seen again. Moreover, the Army needs to train its troops in helicopter insertions, and most of all, helicopter evacuations under fire.
The EH101 is the most impressively powerful helicopter I've ever flown in. It's versatile, can loiter for two hours 200 miles offshore, and can take aboard 30 or so survivors. Its three engines provide a unique safety margin. It is militarily extremely versatile; but it is expensive, and I can see Ministers opting penny-pinchingly for two or three EH101s, plus two or three Super Pumas or Cougars, a generation older, less powerful, less safe, but most of all, cheaper.
But they won't, in the long term, be cheaper, because duplication of parts and of training ground crew will increase costs massively, and could fatally damage the Corps' ability to maintain either aircraft, especially in an economic climate in which it will be struggling to hold on to its personnel. Going for the cheaper, older option alone means we're still going to have face the same question again in 10 years' time.
Career structure
There is an excellent (if unsung) engineering culture in the Corps which can only be maintained by paying ground-crew extremely well. This is true of pilots also. There is still no proper competitive career structure in the Defence Forces, one which bids a tearful farewell to the less competent and which rewards real talent with career-long loyalty and good money. Instead, first-class military personnel, trained at our expense, are leaving in droves to join the higher-paying Ryanair or Aer Lingus.
There's no point in buying any helicopters at all if they're just going to sit in their crates at Casement Aerodrome because no-one can work out how to use a crowbar to get at them. Nor any point either in buying a military helicopter compatible with VIP functions; for then it becomes a full-time plaything for gallivanting politicians, while Rangers bang their heads in the traffic in Kinnegad.
But most of all, defence policy must be created within a political consensus, unchanged by election results, and which plans for 10 years and more into the future. Is our political establishment remotely capable of that kind of serious forward thinking? And am I the Dalai Lama?