Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When I received the recommendation that the military and the Army Ranger Wing should board the vessel, I did so on the basis of the best military advice. The Chief of Staff recommended it and I trust him in his assessment and the team that was with him. This is the context here. They knew what they were dealing with. There are certain situations where it would be preferable to have more resources available, and all of that, but they made a very clear assessment of risk and everything else and made the decision to intervene. The Air Corps was very important in the operation in terms of the surveillance of that ship. The surveillance was really an aerial one for quite some time.

The biggest issue for us coming out of that was the absolute importance of synergising the three services, which is very much a part of the recommendations of the Commission on the Defence Forces. I refer to having the Navy, Air Corps and the Army, and the Army Ranger Wing, all working together, with An Garda Síochána and the Revenue Commissioners. I think we should do this even better and to a greater extent. This is the one lesson we take from this intervention. Instead of having three press releases, there could be one in future from the joint task force. This is not the biggest issue in the world. It was a very good and successful operation. The evacuation out of Sudan was also a very successful and effective operation, undertaken at that stage by people on the civilian side in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Immediately afterwards, people were talking about the kindness of strangers and all this kind of thing. We worked with Europe in trying to evacuate people from Afghanistan.

We do need strategic lift, yes. For procuring it I think we should also be part of a European strategic airlift and consortium within Europe to do that. That is a view I have. There are positives. I am not saying we should not highlight negative situations; we should. In terms of helicopters, it was servicing and maintenance and that is recruitment. There are also issues with those and we are going to get that right. It is not a question of issues around servicing not being satisfactory.

On cybersecurity I think the Senator is being overly harsh. We have made strides in cybersecurity in the past two to three years. The national centre is good. Our military are involved.