Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to go through this and acknowledge that minimal cost is involved but that does not mean I support it. There is a danger in moving in the way we are moving. I raised this when the European Defence Agency and all it entailed was first being discussed. Nobody disagrees with increased efficiencies but part of the European Defence Agency's purpose is to increase capacity across the Defence Forces, which means expending money. If that expenditure is being dictated by other member states, the vast majority of whom are in NATO and whose underlying desire is to enhance NATO or have interoperability between the EU military structure that is now emerging and NATO, I would question it. The context to all this is the debate since the British referendum on EU membership. Since the English decided they would withdraw from the European Union, there has been a rush by some countries to reignite the debate about the European army. The Minister of State has replied to my questions on this in the past so I will not raise it as an issue here. We will have other opportunities for that.

I accept that the proposals before us will incur minimal costs. I am fully supportive of any move which will enhance the capacity of our Naval Service as it carries out its humanitarian work in the Mediterranean in particular. I also accept that as a small country, we need to learn from other countries and other navies and on occasion to co-operate and share but there are some questions that need to be answered about these two proposals. In some of the research I did I looked at the European Commission's joint staff working document on the implementation of the EU maritime security strategy action plan which emerged in June of this year. It states: "Cooperation with NATO (action 1.1.3.) remains a priority for Member States as emphasised throughout the reports". That should be answered. Ireland does not play a role in that but it is not reflected in the Commission document. Do we play a role in it? When we agree with the European Defence Agency and all that entails, we become dependent. It entails interoperability which by its very nature, especially in the field of computer technology which we are talking about here, means that we become dependent. Becoming dependent means that there will be a huge cost if we move away from systems that are shared with other countries and that is the danger. If one looks at the MARSUR proposal, the reason MARSUR II has been proposed, as the Minister of State said, is that the first programme is at an end and it needs to be continued because of the benefits gained from the first programme. That means we will be tied to that programme into the future because we have invested time and effort into it. We will have to continue to buy into such a programme because as computers, technologies and systems develop we become more and more dependent on them.

We have the ability to opt out of the category B programmes because they are not binding on all member states but the category A are because we did not take the option Denmark took to opt out. I do not know what other programmes come under the European Defence Agency. Are there ones that we have opted out of? Is it the case that we are in a rush to get involved in everything because we want to play with the big boys?

The bomb disposal proposal was mentioned by the Minister of State. During the years the Defence Forces have gained an expertise which they have shared throughout the world and that has been recognised. It was one of the reasons there were Irish soldiers in Afghanistan very early on in that conflict. They were there to train Afghani police to identify IEDs and to help in whatever way possible. On that basis, one could say it was a humanitarian approach.

The problem with the second project for the EDA cyber ranges is that when one looks at some of the documents in the background, the idea is that information sharing on maritime issues would not be confined to the European Union. There is talk in the documents of going beyond the existing European Union structure. Will the Minister of State elaborate when it is hoped that will happen? What work has been done in recent times on expanding beyond the existing EU members?

The other issue is that in some ways the cyber range programme deals with a virtual environment and not actual events. In some ways, it is setting out scenarios that would result if there was a cyber attack. The dangers I see as a lay person, which is the problem when one is dealing with something as highly technical as cyber security, is that it will help to strengthen the knowledge of cyber defence operations. A state is sharing its information with 26 other member states, or perhaps 25 if Denmark is not involved. By its nature, sharing information and giving remote access in one country to personnel from another location or country undermines cyber security.

The ability to use such schemes can be undermined once other security services, military forces or navies have some idea of the work and practices involved. Given what we have seen, even in the US presidential debate, if we are to believe what has emerged about Hillary Clinton's e-mails and whether the Russians are involved, it is other countries that are mainly involved in cyber attacks. We have also seen supposed allies targeting cyber attacks on each other. We need only take Angela Merkel as an example. It was the Americans, her supposed allies, who were tapping into her e-mails and telephone conversations. Therefore, being dependent or reliant in any way on schemes developed by other countries is a dangerous road to go down. Those countries may currently be allies but, as we have seen from the history of Europe, in particular, that can change quite quickly. Could we not do it ourselves? The cost is minimal and it is a virtual environment rather than a real-life situation. I hope we will never face the real-life situation.

The specifics of these programmes are not laid out in full in the briefing document we received from the Department or in what has been said by the Minister of State. There was a reference to 100 hours on the part of some military personnel. That is not huge; it is minor. How long will it last? Is it expected that there will be another follow-up programme? In some ways, some kids would probably be able to do this on their computers, given it is a game, albeit an important one, if it is a virtual scenario. I know from speaking to military personnel during the years that they are keen to develop their capabilities and their understanding of how armies are becoming more dependent on computer and IT systems. There was a concern that armies were becoming more reliant on them and that, in the event of a war, much of their capabilities, if they were computerised and not as mechanical as they previously were, could be knocked out. If scenarios have been developed on how to respond to emergency situations based on computer simulations, then everyone will go by the textbook. The enemy or whoever is attacking will have a grasp of the likely response in certain scenarios because they have been practised in this virtual environment.