Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their two interesting presentations. Recently, as a committee, the Chairman, myself and Deputy Brady visited Stockholm to attend the EU Defence Conference and it was notable that Ireland does not spend as much on defence and we are very much non-contentious when it comes to our European counterparts. Europe has adopted a more offensive stance whereas Ireland is a neutral country and, therefore, our spending on defence is quite limited. Perhaps our role is more technological, which is a view expressed by other speakers who have come before the committee. Ireland leads the way in technologies such as data protection. Are An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces the right bodies to protect this country from cyberattacks? Does the IIEA believe a statutory body or stand-alone entity should be established and properly funded to deal with cyberattacks?

Artificial intelligence has been in the news a lot of late. Our Data Protection Commission takes a leading role in Europe. Does the IIEA believe Ireland needs to take a lead role in regulating AI? AI is interesting and I would like to hear what the delegation thinks about that.

On a grey zone, during the Trump presidential election, Facebook tightened its advertising as did Twitter in terms of electioneering. Does that constitute a grey zone disruption?

Reference was made to monitoring by Russian vessels, and the limitations of our defence capacity and Naval Service in general. How serious should we consider the monitoring of our cables by Russian vessels? Everything can be weaponised but in the war in Ukraine we have seen the weaponising of migrants where Russia left the western corridor from Ukraine into Poland wide open for safe passage to allow migrants flood Europe. Please comment on that. Does the IIEA think that links into anything it can do?

Again, I thank the witnesses for their interesting presentations, which are to the fore so I say well done.