David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I will be brief as many of my colleagues asked a lot of the questions already. I join colleagues in commending our troops abroad. I have been out there a few times and the reaction in Lebanon, in particular, from the civilian population is very positive to our troops in the way they interact and the informal friendly and professional way they very often go about their business. Our troops are recognised globally for being extremely professional in peacekeeping operations. I want to put that on the record.

Moving on to what Deputy Clarke mentioned a while ago, I see more and more articles and studies with headlines that say democracy globally is in retreat. That links with to what she has been saying with respect to conflict and climate change and what the Minister himself said with respect to the increase in files in the United Nations at the moment across the globe, which went from 13 a number of years ago to 30 now and is growing. That is something about which I think we have to be concerned. Freedom and democracy are also in retreat in many parts of the world. We cannot be complacent about that. We have a role to play there in preserving freedoms and democracy as we know it.

On the Reserve, again, part of the issue the Minister mentioned was the fact of getting troops in more than once and so on. We know what the issues are. Where are we with the Reserve going overseas? How soon and how many? What is being done to secure their civilian jobs at home while they are actually abroad? Those are some specific questions.

I have already gone on the record more than once to question the recruitment process in the Defence Forces and the fact that 60% of people who want to join, or rather who apply to join, fail the aptitude test. I mentioned that recently in the Dáil as well and maybe it is something that can be looked at. That figure seems to me to be very high. Deputy Berry might have more to say on that in a minute seeing as he has experience of it. It seems to be quite high, however. If youngsters want to join and they are faced with this, is there something wrong here? Are we missing something? I do not know.

The Minister mentioned cybersecurity. Will he comment on the security of our mobile telephone systems? Earlier this year, the Minister told us his own telephone was hacked. How secure are our mobile telephone systems? Everything is on these things now. We saw some reports in the newspapers last week about the Pegasus software that has been developed in some other countries and is being used to quite devastating impact and effect. People tell me one does not even know it is on one's telephone. The Chairman's telephone could be hacked and he would not even know it. The Minister's telephone could be as well. A person's physical location can be monitored and tracked or who he or she is with or speaks to and what emails he or she sends can be monitored and so on. Deputy Brady's telephone could be the same - who knows? None of us knows.