us into NATO, or some European Army, which is nonsense. It's usually the far left, or Sinn Fein (if there's any suggestion of co-operating with the British). Now, of course the Irish Army Generals would love nothing better than to get the country involved in NATO or whatever but there is a sense in Ireland that we are proud of our military commitment as peacekeepers under the United Nations flag, and we are too small to make a difference militarily, from a financial point of view. Our army is about 10,000, the navy is mostly comprised of 1,000 personnel with 8 ships mostly employed in fishery protection. The Irish Airforce is similarly ill-equipped (we depend on the RAF, if truth be told).
What I think there is a crying need for, is a European Coast Guard, along the lines of what you have in the US. I think there could be a well argued case here that would get a lot of support here in Ireland.
One thing i would say is that we don't have much of a far right here in Ireland, thankfully. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael would at best be described as centre right parties (though largely to the left of the Democratic Party) and they were adversaries over the last 90 years in what was called "civil war politics", which stunted the growth of proper Left-Right politics. Parties of the left always are quick to accuse FF & FG of being right wing, but in reality 90% of politics in Ireland is centrist. Even the once 32 County Socialist Republic Sein Fein now have moved towards the centre in order chase the votes, though there is still a lot of distrust of their true thoughts on this.
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