{"id":375964,"date":"2026-04-01T06:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T06:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/375964\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T06:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T06:10:10","slug":"grasping-irelands-defence-nettle-urgently-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/375964\/","title":{"rendered":"Grasping Ireland\u2019s defence nettle urgently \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 Senator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tom-clonan\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tom-clonan\/\">Tom Clonan<\/a> rightly questions our current state of national security. As a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Defence and National Security, he emphasises the limitations of this committee. It\u2019s remit is limited to oversight of undersea cables and related hybrid threats. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Government\u2019s recent decision to spend some \u20ac600 million on defence upgrades based upon the commission on recommendations on the future of our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/defence-forces\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/defence-forces\/\">Defence Forces<\/a>, has now been overtaken by the invasion of Ukraine and the devastating Iranian conflagration. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is time we as a nation took our head out of the sand, we are totally dependant on outsiders to defend us, who are unable to defend themselves. All our elected representatives need to grasp this nettle urgently, not just Clonan, and demonstrate that they can take responsibility for the defence and security of future generations. \u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">VINCENT CARROLL , <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Rathfarnham, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dublin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 Senator Tom Clonan rightly questions our current state of national security. As a member of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13308,61,11829,60,150432,43,168493,9688],"class_list":{"0":"post-375964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-defence-forces","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-tom-clonan","15":"tag-ukraine-crisis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}