Is it time to join Nato

Do you mean the UK, the country we'd expect to defend us if anything happened? The country that has to scramble their jets when Russians come into our airspace?

Yes.

Its time to get off the fence and expecting others to watch our backs.

There are smaller nations than us joined up and playing their part.

i expect NATO will have to be completely rethought after the ukraine invasion by Russia

an EU army would may be a better option

Stop spending 1million per day on plastic bollards and cycle lanes and invest in radar and heavy aviation to be somewhat useful to our nato neighbours.

Maybe it is time.

Certainly its time for Ireland to have a proper think of what it wants from its defence forces. We have the weakest defence forces by far in Western Europe and a vast amount of Ocean and airspace to defend....

The basics would be nice, but yes, NATO may be a good idea alright.

Poland, UK, US, Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Greece, Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium, Czechia, Albania all suffered a lot moe a lot more recently at the hands of Germany, Romania, Hungary and Italy...

100% yes The Republic should join NATO. Russia has already started a cyberwar with us in case Pro Russia folks try to make us forget. A Hybrid war would be next on their agenda which we already see signs of courtesy of some odd comments from Russia about Ireland and the Irish language of late.

I would be in no rush for us to join NATO.

However, the defence capability we sorely lack needs to addressed. I think even the recently released Defence Commission report is now overtaken by Geo-political reality.

We need to accept that option 3 is now the baseline. We are not and never will be capable of going toe to toe with a great power. That should not be our aim however, we must be able to provide control of our airspace and EEZ, to be able to surveil and inderdict interlopers and to present at least a notional defensive capability.

The rush to fighter jets? We certainly need the capability but I'd suggest for that we start with offering one of our European neighbours use of SNN as a western approaches base for air policing. Capability takes time to build and we should do it carefully.

Focus our resources on our Navy and on actual maritime patrol and exclusion capability. The new CASA are a good step in that direction.

We desperately need an airlift capability and we should consider joining either an Aircraft pool such as EATC.

We don't need to rush towards NATO, but certainly we should both improve our capability and integrate more with PESCO.

Neutrality and whether we are or not? Needs to be dealt with head on. Yes we have an important tradition of being militarily non-aligned. But we are a "western" nation on the edge of the EU with a huge amount of strategic value in our location for both sea and air communication as well as the cables 😉

Our only constitutional nod to neutrality is article 49. Which absent invasion, grants the power to make war to the Daíl. A referendum on whether we seek to change that article to "neutral" or to give a clearer language? Maybe, but other than many in Ireland assuming we are "legally" neutral rather than just "traditionally"? What would it gain.

The lack of devensive capability is a drum that many of us armchair generals have been banging for quite a while. The actions of Russia, the threats to Sweden and Finland and the nuclear sabre rattling only strengthens that need IMO.

In the interim? We should sent out Javelin and AT4 to Ukraine.

Ireland and and other countries need to join NATO to prevent states like Russia and China from starting a global nuclear war. There is no much value in being one of the few not bombed in the nuclear winter waiting for starvation and radiation poisoning to do the job.