Dr. Margaret Stanley:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. On the environmental aspects, for this very first national maritime security strategy we are developing, we are aiming to focus specifically on national security and defence aspects of maritime security for this initial roll-out. I absolutely agree with the Deputy: maritime security is bigger than national security and defence. Environmental security, economic security and human security are all important. For this initial focus, however, we wanted to focus on the most urgent risks and threats in this space. That is why we are looking at the national security and defence element of maritime security in this initial phase.

On the space assets issue, as the committee has heard, we have a team looking at this issue out to 2040 under various types of assets that might potentially be needed. That analysis is still ongoing. As part of one of the early support measures for security, the Tánaiste agreed that we join the common information sharing environment, which is an EU initiative focusing on maritime information. That will give the Defence Forces access to the various data streams that this information platform has, and that includes access to space-based assets to information from that.

On the wider investment issue, the national development plan allocates €1.7 billion to the defence development space out to 2030. That €1.7 billion represents a very significant increase in funding compared to the last allocation, a 55% increase. There is a team in my Department looking at how best to focus that funding for the best effect, the most capability and what is needed. A civil-military team is looking at that at the moment. I mentioned to another Deputy earlier that I would not want to say exactly how much that might affect the maritime space. I cannot give a particular figure of what this strategy might cost but I do know there are projects already ongoing which will have a significant effect on improving maritime security. For example, there is a well-advanced military radar project going on at the moment, and maritime radar will be part of that. That will be a hugely significant investment. There is also a team looking at developing an acquisition of sonar capability for the Naval Service. That will increase significantly the capabilities of the Naval Service to detect objects around the critical infrastructure that is in the seabed, in our waters.

As regards the issue of bringing together Departments, I am not sure, given the nature of the maritime domain, how practical it would be to bring all elements of the maritime domain into one Government Department. I think it is too wide a space, too wide an area. What I think the strategy can do is propose and develop new methods of joint co-ordination among all the key Departments and agencies in order that we can better work together, share information, do real-time analysis of what is actually happening and have better decision-making structures involving all who need to be involved in that. However, this will require the strategy to identify exactly what the rules and responsibilities are there, who needs to be in the room sharing information and making decisions and so on. Hopefully, the strategy will start developing a roadmap to getting to where we need to be on this area.