Participation in European army will not serve Irish nation well

Some of the arguments put in your editorial (March 9) advocating an EU army echo those of the era of European colonizations of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Giving guns to the European Union is no different to providing armed forces to EU’s predecessors such as the various East India Companies, or Cecil Rhodes. And there is very little difference between the Irish General Pat Nash commanding a French/Irish force sent to Chad in 2008, and the Irish General Thomas Lally at the head of the French/Irish brigade sent to Ponticherry in India to protect French commercial interests there in 1757.

These days we hear the same age-old imperial arguments being put by bureaucrats who have put their patriotism aside for the comfort of their plush Pullman seats on the EU gravy train. They are the ones who have consistently denied financial sanction for essential national defensive measures, but have had no problem paying tens of millions of euro for consultants and wasteful technologies to advance their own administrative systems.These are the same people who advocated reliance on the EU to relieve us from our financial crisis, and whose advise has