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

I appreciate the contribution Deputy Lawless has made. One of the most important points he made was a fundamental one, namely, that we cannot do all this on our own. In other words, enhancing our own military capability and interoperability cannot be done alone. We are in UNIFIL with the Polish military as part of the Irish-Polish battalion. There has to be interoperability. In other missions, we worked with different nations. There is a Hungarian element to the UNIFIL deployment. Interoperability is very important, as are capability and understanding the advances.

If one wanted to learn from other alliances, one might look to North Korea, Russia and Iran. Are we seriously suggesting that? No, we are not. We are members of the European Union and we must work with European member states in respect of the capability question and procurement. We are considering radar now, for example, and may very well do so using a government-to-government perspective to ensure we have sufficient expertise to achieve value for money and the optimal means of procuring radar for the country. These are all issues that we consider.

There has been an excessive tendency in Ireland to regard any such co-operation and collaboration as undermining our neutrality or whatever. We are simply not in a position to act alone. By definition, we all learn from each other in politics. We travel abroad and meet other politicians from different Parliaments and examine their systems. Militaries do the same. In fact, the European Union defence industry is the most fragmented, and its militaries are the most fragmented. In the United States, there might be two or three types of helicopters or certain weapons, but in Europe there are 15, 16 or 17. Despite everything, there is relatively poor interoperability in Europe compared with the US, China and others.

As I mentioned to Deputy Carthy, we have not been overly active in PESCO. It is an open forum to improve capability, knowledge and experience in areas such as maritime security and cybersecurity. Deputy Lawless's point on western liberal democracies is important. There are big differences in how countries of the world are governed. The reasons for the current amount of migration into Europe include economic dislocation, war, conflict and the climate, but there is also a sense that there is a better quality of life here for people rearing families. Also, people may be fleeing authoritarianism, military autocracies, dictatorships and so on. That is an important point.

On the Deputy's point on connectivity, the war in Ukraine created a genuine energy crisis. The only silver lining of a dark cloud was the acceleration of our move to renewables, but essentially the war was a very significant contributor to energy inflation. Wars have impacts, and the Middle East is having an impact in terms of shipping lanes, which the Deputy said are the arteries of the world economy. The Houthis are disrupting trade and increasing insurance costs, etc.

Very often, it is the furthest behind and least well-off who suffer first in respect of any disruption to shipping lanes or the economy. For example, when the grain production was undermined in Ukraine, it was the Middle East and Africa that were to suffer the most.

On disinformation, it is a fact of life that foreign actors all across Europe are manipulating information, disseminating false information and targeting European societies in this regard. A malicious online presence is designed to generate confusion, sow division, fear and hatred, and undermine trust in government and democratic institutions. At the highest levels of the European Union, efforts are being made to combat what is happening, including the Strategic Compass of 2022. Within that, there are new EU toolboxes concerning hybrid threats and foreign information manipulation and interference. There is a suite of measures to deter, mitigate and identify threats in the first place and also respond to disinformation interference campaigns and impose restrictive measures where necessary.

As part of a broader European response, we have the Digital Services Act, with which the committee is familiar, and the code of practice on disinformation. Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland's digital services co-ordinator to counteract disinformation, and we have a new national strategy to counter disinformation. The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media will be developing it and publishing it shortly, subject to Government approval. That involves an all-of-government, all-of-society approach to countering disinformation. The role of An Coimisiún Toghcháin is to examine online electoral information and protect the fairness and integrity of elections. It recently published a voluntary framework.

On maritime security and critical undersea infrastructure, we are taking part in international initiatives. It is a huge issue for us given our exclusive economic zone. We saw what happened with the Nord Stream pipeline and saw the Baltic connector incident, highlighting the sensitivity of such resources. Again, international co-operation is vital. We cannot deal with cyber threats on our own. We have enhanced our engagement on many EU initiatives, including a new critical seabed infrastructure project, CSIP, within PESCO. I do not know what the problem is with that, but I believe it is vital that we participate in it. We have observer status. I reacted a bit to Deputy Carthy but we need to get real about this. We have observer capacity on a project concerning critical seabed infrastructure and we should be welcoming such participation.

The Department of Defence is responsible for the implementation of the European Union's critical entities resilience and network information and security directives, which will enhance the resilience of critical entities that provide vital information for societal functions.

On maritime security, there is the critical undersea infrastructure. That is a key priority in the new individually tailored partnership programme agreed with NATO in 2023. We are pursuing further engagement with NATO's critical undersea infrastructure co-ordination cell. We have a response to the Portal Kombat pro-Russian disinformation campaign, which again seeks to promote confusion, and so forth.

What is noticeable - I will finish on this - is that since the war on Ukraine, there has been a significant increase in such activity, in both disinformation and cyberactivity. Portal Kombat is one such pro-Russian disinformation campaign identified by the French authorities in February. It is not particularly sophisticated, as I believe the Deputy has said, but there is an associated network of websites including 19 across the European Union, one of which had a specific focus on Ireland. I will leave it at that for the Deputy.