Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Exactly. When I was there, Ireland's secondee on CCDCOE, Commandant Frank Hickey, gave a presentation to me, along with his superior, on the work they are doing more broadly across Europe but also on Ireland's increased participation in that. It is a NATO-accredited centre that enhances capability and co-operation between 38 countries in cyber defence. It brings together legal, operational, strategy and technical expertise. They made the point to me very clearly that Ireland is an island, which is grand, but nowhere is an island when it comes to cyber security. There is no point in considering that just because we are off in the North Atlantic floating along that we are in any way immune to the type of attacks that other people have felt. We have to have the expertise to be able to defend against that. I was very proud to hear that Ireland participated in a Locked Shields event. I do not want to call it a game because it is not a game. It is an operational exercise where there is an attack and a series of defence teams are there to try to protect the systems. It happens at an exceptionally high level and the fact that Ireland is participating in this means Ireland had the depth of understanding with the participation and the training to be able to compete and participate in that exercise. That was a very important measure.

We should not be afraid of co-operation with EU partners and NATO partners. We derive for our Defence Forces and our teams additional levels of understanding, capability and expertise that are of benefit to Ireland. Of course we have gone from observer status to participant status at a number of PESCO missions, including de-mining and undersea cables. We have an individually tailored partnership with NATO on marine infrastructure and undersea cables, which is very important to Ireland. I will highlight, however, that the energy infrastructure is nearly more important to Ireland and is something we need to talk about. This sort of participation is of benefit to our Defence Forces because they are having the opportunity to get access to information. It is also true to say that within that group of countries, wherever it happens to be, there is another meeting inside that Ireland is not included in. This is obviously because we are not part of NATO. That is fine and that is our position but we must be aware there is a conversation in the room and there is another conversation which we are part of. We just need to be aware of that. It is really important that we participated in the Locked Shields cyber defence exercise. It is run annually and I hope we will continue to participate in that because I believe we need to.

On the expectations around how we contribute for the future, that is not set and it is an open question at this point. In a way, the work of the defence commission is a big opportunity to develop resilience in a way that does not need to be thought about just in terms of active security but can be thought about defensively and in terms of resilience. We have not had a good enough conversation about how we protect floating wind energy assets off the west coast of Ireland, for example, when they become viable commercially at scale, and what the jurisdictional issues are and how that feeds into the planning. We talked about this at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in committee B with Deputy Howlin so many years ago. As far as I am concerned that sort of question is as big a part of the defence and security question as any question in relation to weapons or exercises or anything of that kind. We have to find our own place within that conversation, one that is of benefit to Ireland and makes a reasonable contribution to the shared challenges of Europe. We do have a civilian military opportunity with our tech sector and the opportunity to participate there. We must remember that while we are militarily neutral - and the Senator has identified it - we do have a serious gap in our personnel, our investment, and in what we can reasonably do to protect ourselves. Being militarily neutral does not mean not spending anything. It means spending more. It means being able to defend ourselves. We have not had that perspective and it is important anyway that we do that. It has been shown to us since the last general election, for example, and how much more important that is now in the face of ongoing geopolitical unrest and what that means for the Continent of Europe. I do not fully know the answer to the question yet but rather than simply dismiss the idea of a defence commission or believe it is not relevant to us we must find our best space within it and see what we can do constructively.