Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 July 2025

Committee on European Union Affairs

Findings of the 2025 European Movement Ireland EU Poll: European Movement Ireland

2:00 am

Ms Noelle O'Connell:

I will take the Deputy's security and defence question and then I will pass over to my colleague Ms Hayes for some of the questions on climate and migration. He is absolutely correct. Our geographically peripheral location does not magically insulate us from what is happening in the wider world. He mentioned Estonia. I have talked to my Estonian counterparts, and they are very clearly attuned to the cyber and hybrid threats they are facing. We are not insulated from that. I do not believe, from an Irish perspective, that it is mutually exclusive.

I know Deputy Ó Murchú will be very familiar with this as he was one of the Oireachtas representatives to the Conference on the Future of Europe, which was the largest exercise in participatory democracy worldwide a number of years ago. We carried out a series of town hall debates around the country and we asked members of the public to come in and give their views on security and defence. We found a deep, everlasting and important pride in our military neutrality, and our unblemished and untrammelled peacekeeping record. However, people were very alive, aware and attuned to the changing world we live in. We need to have these conversations and the defence forum that took place a number of years ago under Dame Louise Richardson was really important. We must look at this, as the Deputy outlined.

Lorna, do you want-----

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