I am not sure if the Taoiseach will recall exactly where he was on this day three years ago. He was actually on the Grand Parade in Cork when he quite kindly attended the military veteran's respect and loyalty parade on 4 May. That movement was established, as the Taoiseach is aware, to highlight the very poor terms, conditions and pay for members of the Defence Forces, a phenomenon that is, unfortunately, continuing to this day. To be fair, the Taoiseach was the Leader of the Opposition at the time. He listened to the speeches and I believe that he agreed with the vast majority, if not all, of what was said. Unfortunately, fast forward three years and we are pretty much in the same place. Perhaps we are even a little worse because the Ukrainian situation has highlighted the deficiencies that were pretty much hidden in the past.

To be fair, the Government's and the State's response to the Ukrainian crisis from a humanitarian and economic perspective has been good and commendable. Unfortunately, however, there has been absolutely no appreciable improvement in the country's ability to protect itself despite what has happened in the last 70 days in eastern Europe.

Last weekend saw the incursion of a number of Russian aircraft into Swedish and Danish airspace. Our Scandinavian cousins actually have an air policing service that could detect, intercept and escort those aircraft out of their airspace. Even more sinisterly still, a mock simulated submarine attack against Ireland was played out on Russian state television as well. Again, there is a reason for that. There was a reason why the attack was simulated from the Irish exclusive economic zone, EEZ. Everyone recognises that this country is very poorly protected and is the weak spot from an EU perspective.

To be fair, we should realise this country is militarily defenceless. We really are at the mercy of rogue states like the Russian Federation that can do with us whatever they wish. Can the Taoiseach offer any reassurance to the House that the State's inability to protect itself will be addressed in the short-term and that 100 years after us gaining our independence, we will soon be in a position to protect our territorial integrity and sovereignty?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and for his consistency in highlighting it, and for his good memory of the significant meeting we had three years ago today at the Grand Parade in terms of the Defence Forces. I take his point more generally that there is clearly a need to upgrade significantly and improve resources and capability in respect of our Defence Forces. We need not just to maintain sufficient military capability but add to and strengthen it.

The Government wanted to get the balance right and have a proper researched approach to this. For that reason, as the Deputy will know, the programme for Government committed to the establishment of an independent Commission on the Defence Forces. That commission was established within the first six months of the Government and its report was published in February.

The report is a very significant body of work amounting to over 180 pages. It had a very wide process of consultation with nearly 500 public submissions. The commission met a wide stakeholder group, conducted site visits across a large number of military locations around the country and met with more than 1,000 Defence Forces members and their representative associations. As the Deputy knows, the report proposes very significant changes for the Defence Forces and covers high-level Defence Forces structures, defence capabilities, organisation, culture and human resources, the Reserve Defence Force, RDF, and above all funding.

There are three indicative levels of ambition. Level of ambition one represents current capability. Level of ambition two represents enhanced capabilities, which would involve building on current capability to address specific priority gaps in our ability to deal with an assault on Irish sovereignty and serve in high-intensity peace support, crisis management and humanitarian relief operations overseas. This would involve a significant defence funding increase of €500 million per annum above current defence spending. Level of ambition three would involve developing full-spectrum defence capabilities to protect Ireland and its people comparable to similar-sized countries in Europe. The report sets out costings of approximately €3 billion per annum for this.

These are, therefore, very significant recommendations with very significant implications, particularly in respect of expenditure. There have been interdepartmental consultations. The Minister for Defence will bring forward a memo to Government in June in respect of that consultation between Departments and in respect of the recommendations with a view to the Government making decisions then within a timeline as to how we would enhance and strengthen our overall capabilities.

We also accept that in the modern era, security challenges are such that they cannot be met individually on your own in the sense that we are part of the United Nations and of European Union security and defence discussions and the strategic compass in particular, which provides a political and strategic direction for EU security and defence policy for the next ten years.

My big concern is the length of time this process is taking. The Commission on the Defence Forces was established at the end of 2020 and we still do not have an outcome or result. One of the international members of the commission gave some public commentary a couple of days ago in which he described our Defence Forces as not being fit for purpose. Those views were echoed by the Chief of Staff yesterday, which is a fairly scandalous indictment of what has happened over recent decades from an investment point of view. I urge the Government to be as ambitious as possible in terms of both the content and the timing of the delivery of this. We have no idea where the Ukrainian crisis is going, whether it is going to escalate or whether Ireland will become involved against its will, which is not entirely our decision. I urge the Taoiseach to be as ambitious as possible. I look forward to that memorandum going to the Government in the next number of weeks.

Obviously, the key issue will be resources and the level of expenditure increases we can accommodate within the broad range of challenges and pressures on Government expenditure more generally. We accept the basic point that we need to enhance and strengthen our military capability, not least because the world has changed. The immoral and unjustifiable war on Ukraine in many ways reveals certain vulnerabilities in European-wide security and the security of the European Union. Moreover, in light of other threats, from cybersecurity to hybrid threats, it is not all about conventional welfare. We need to strengthen our expertise and capability in cybersecurity, which we are doing and in respect of which we are allocating expenditure. We also need to work with other member states in combating that and other forms of hybrid warfare.