In light of the Russian war on the people of Ukraine, a conversation has started that was referred to on many occasions in the House in the past couple of weeks as regards our place in the world in a military sense. It relates to whether we should be militarily non-aligned or otherwise. The Taoiseach yesterday referred to the prospect of a citizens' assembly debating this subject and in light of the Commission on the Defence Forces report, which I acknowledge the Government will respond to by the summer, it is critical that we have this discussion and harness the conversations taking place across the country. Will the Taoiseach outline his proposals for the citizens' assembly referred to yesterday? What is the likely timeline for such an endeavour?

I thank the Deputy for his question. He might also have picked up on the latter part of my commentary where I indicated that our immediate focus should be on the current war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis flowing from it, as well as the need to direct all our policies and energies to that. I am somewhat concerned as we need a united approach in the country on how we deal with Ukraine. People have different perspectives on military neutrality and how security policy evolves, and I am simply saying that one mechanism to facilitate such a discussion would be a citizens' assembly. I do not have a timeline just yet or anything like that. I put that as a contribution to that debate to try to separate that from the immediate need to focus on the crisis in Ukraine and its impact on the European Continent. There is nothing related to our military neutrality that so far has restricted anything we or Europe is doing.