John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the witnesses for the presentation, which was very interesting and there is a lot to delve into. I want to focus on one area because of the time. I do not think there are any great surprises regarding the issues of concern to people. Migration was always going to be a significant issue and it is borne out in the poll. In saying that, I am not belittling it; it is a big issue. I can also understand people's feelings that this has not been handled well. When small countries in particular rely on rules-based organisations and the rest of it, the EU has a problem with some of its members at the moment. That is because of playing by the rules. In essence the EU has reached a crossroads in that regard. Either everybody plays by the rules or the EU must make a decision about how serious it is about its rules.

One question was: where do you think the EU's performance is the strongest? Interestingly, defence and security is down at 6%. Another question was: where do you think the EU's performance is the weakest? Defence and security is the second highest at 18%, with migration clearly the top one there. There is another question: which issues are you most concerned about at EU level? Security and defence is at 40%. That is very useful. It is alarming that just over a quarter of people are concerned these days about climate. Without being pious about it, that is the existential one and should be right up there. It shows that we are in a tumultuous world full of volatility. It is reflected in what is happening in the world; the world is jittery. The world has gone volatile and I think people are very frightened underneath it all.

I want to focus on security and defence because we are not talking about the traditional guns and weapons any more. We are talking about security and it is a language thing. Across an institution that has multiple languages, trying to find language that applies evenly to everybody can be difficult particularly with a word like "defence". We are the gateway to the European Union for data. We will be the gateway to the European Union for artificial intelligence. These are really significant things. We are incredibly vulnerable. Even the Japanese raised the issue of the cables coming into Ireland with the Taoiseach last week. Therefore, increased spending on security in order to protect the assets we have is a no-brainer.

Have the witnesses drilled down into what people understand by the question of security and defence? I feel we have much more work to do on it. A diplomat recently made a point to me about people getting information. Apparently, the Estonians have done more work than anybody on disinformation. We really need to get our act together. We seem to stand back and let it wash over us. We need to make significant investments on combating disinformation.