Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on her role and look forward to working with her. I am delighted that she started off today by talking about Ireland's status and the triple lock. I believe that we need to bring in expert opinion to identify precisely what Ireland is. There are different views such as neutrality versus militarily non-aligned. We need to sort that out once and for all. We also need to sort out where the triple lock stands with respect to our status internationally. I agree with Deputies Smith and Stanley. The tight constraints that this committee has been set up under do nothing for national security.

It is quite good on the Defence Forces. If this committee looks at cybersecurity, we can see that there are three agencies in the State that deal with cybersecurity. They are the National Cyber Security Centre, the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau and the Defence Forces cyber capabilities. All three should be subject to this committee. I looked at the terms of reference for UK committees. The UK does not have a single committee for security and defence. It has two separate committees. We have an organisation within the Defence Forces called J2, which is a secret service organisation. That organisation should be answerable to this committee and so too should the Garda security services. I believe there was an effort to tie the committee's hands before we started and from what I have read so far, to limit us to terms and conditions of employment for members of the Defence Forces, which is significant. I am not for one moment taking away from that. We need to look at retention issues as a matter of urgency. However, if this committee deals with security and defence, I agree with the two previous speakers that we should be looking at security and defence. We are living in a very dangerous world. I welcome the Cathaoirleach's approach regarding sorting out the neutrality thing and the triple lock thing. Let us have professional advice on this before we make any decisions.