The former chief of the Irish Naval Service has said he believes former taoiseach Charles Haughey “quietly intervened” about Ireland needing greater investment in ships.
Vice-admiral Mark Mellett, also former chief of staff of the Defence Forces, said an interaction with Haughey taught him how political influence can sometimes work in “unexpected ways”.
Mellett was speaking about his new book Blue Heart: War, Climate and the Battle for the Ocean that Keeps us Alive at the Institute of International & European Affairs on Thursday evening.
Mellett recalled how in late 2005 while he was commanding LÉ Eithne, he received an unexpected satellite telephone call from the former taoiseach who wanted to know when the ship would next be in Dublin.
“I invited him [Haughey] aboard, but he explained that he was no longer well enough to visit. Haughey was seriously ill at the time,” he said.
“Instead, he invited me with some of the crew to visit his home in Kinsealy. We brought a video tribute from the ship’s company set to the music of Coldplay’s Yellow. Back then our survival suits were bright yellow and the music seemed particularly apt ... We discussed the Naval Service and the need for Ireland to invest in larger, more capable ships, including a multi-role vessel that could support a wider range of defence, humanitarian and national tasks.
“Not long afterwards, a message came from Bertie Ahern’s office: ‘You did a good thing just there’.”
Mellett said that at a subsequent government briefing, Ahern, who was taoiseach at the time, questioned why naval investment had been neglected and “made clear his view that Ireland needed more ships, and bigger ships”.
“I have always believed that Haughey had quietly intervened,” said Mellett.
“The episode taught me something about how political influence can work, sometimes in unexpected ways. But it also reinforced a frustration that followed me throughout my career: the distance between recognising a strategic requirement, securing political support and actually delivering the capability.”
He added that it is a problem that extends well beyond defence and can be seen today in energy infrastructure, climate adaptation and “many other areas where decisions taken now will shape the country for decades”.
Mellett said one of the central arguments he makes in his book is that “we continue to organise our institutions” around problems that are increasingly interconnected.
“Climate change is not simply an environmental issue. It affects food production, migration, energy systems, economic stability and national security,” he said.
“The ocean sits at the heart of many of these relationships, yet remains remarkably peripheral to political and strategic thinking. That is why I argue for a fundamentally different approach to ocean governance, including the establishment of a department of the ocean in Ireland.”