#NavalServiceRole – Patrol vessels of the Irish Naval Service should participate in UN- and EU-sponsored "international maritime security" missions, according to the Irish Maritime Forum.

The State's fleet should also be expanded to match the size of New Zealand's navy, given that Ireland's maritime zone has expanded from 410,000sq km to 1 million sq km – more than 12 times the island's land area, the forum says in a submission to Government.

The forum, comprising former naval officers and mariners, says the Government's defence White Paper should redress the imbalance between the Army and Naval Service to reflect the fact that 92 per cent of Ireland is "under water" with "several trillion euro" in natural resource assets, ranging from hydocarbons to fish to wind and wave energy.

Commenting on the recently-published Green Paper on defence, the forum says it is "depressingly clear" that "land-centred thinking is dominant" in its drafting.

The forum says the Naval Service area of operations has "grown exponentially" since the publication of the Government's last White Paper on defence in 2000.

For much more on this story, today's Irish Times has a report.