Ireland\u2019s position of politically supporting Ukraine while remaining militarily neutral is a \u201cdifficult path\u201d to follow, a senior Irish official has said after being challenged to explain Irish neutrality at a defence conference in France.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a difficult path or line to us to follow, but that\u2019s the line,\u201d Department of Defence<\/a> secretary general Jacqui McCrum told an audience at the Paris Defence and Strategy Forum on Wednesday.<\/p>\n She spoke in reply to a former British MP, Robert Walter, who asked her to \u201cexplain to me and to this audience Ireland\u2019s modern concept of neutrality\u201d, given the support she had expressed for Ukraine and for defence co-operation within the European Union<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m very cognisant of the remarks made by your current president and your former president,\u201d Walter said.<\/p>\n McCrum jokingly thanked him for the \u201ceasy start\u201d to questions and replied that she believed Ireland was shifting to take defence more seriously, noting an enlarged department and public engagement with the issue of maritime security.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the debate on defence is possibly changing,\u201d McCrum told the audience.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of debate in our country about this, and particularly … about co-operation with partners. It\u2019s possibly a smaller voice that gets a lot of air time,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world has changed and it is continuing to change. Sometimes people think defence is war and attacking people. I see it as an insurance policy, and we can\u2019t abdicate out of that insurance policy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe probably have to mature that discussion and debate on a national level.\u201d<\/p>\n McCrum was also asked by another questioner to explain how Ireland was improving defences in response to Russian vessels in Irish waters, and the incident in which unidentified drones flew near the flight path of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> during his December visit.<\/p>\n