Role
Ireland's favourable geographical location, on the north-west border of the European Union, makes any external threat or future invasion unlikely. The state has a long-standing policy of non-belligerence in armed conflicts that included neutrality in World War II. For these reasons, the Republic's military capabilities are relatively modest. However, the state has a long history of involvement in United Nations Peacekeeping operations. Functions of the Defence Forces include:
- Preparation for the defence of the state against armed attack.
- Assisting the Garda Síochána (police force), including the protection of the internal security of the state.
- Peace-keeping, crisis management and humanitarian relief operations in support of the United Nations.
- Policing the fisheries, in accordance with the state's obligations under European Union agreements.
- Miscellaneous civil contingency duties requested by the Government such as search and rescue, air ambulance provision, providing secure air transport for ministers, assistance in the event of natural and other disasters, ensuring the maintenance of essential services, and assisting in dealing with oil pollution at sea.
Read more about this topic: Defence Forces (Ireland)
Famous quotes containing the word role:
“Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“All of the assumptions once made about a parent’s role have been undercut by the specialists. The psychiatric specialists, the psychological specialists, the educational specialists, all have mystified child development. They have fostered the idea that understanding children and promoting their intellectual well-being is too complex for mothers and requires the intervention of experts.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The trouble is that the expression ‘material thing’ is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for ‘sense-datum’; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he ‘perceives.’”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)