Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire and I welcome the answer. There will be general agreement on the necessity involved in this. When I spoke of the Russian manoeuvres I did so from the point of view that it highlighted the issue in the public domain; I get that they told us about them beforehand. Following that we had the Irish Aviation Authority before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications and there is the scenario whereby it is given certain information by its equivalent in Britain, which is informed by the British military and the Royal Air Force. There is a capacity failing in that and that goes to the wider question of what neutrality means and the fact that we need to have capacity in order to be neutral.

I will digress slightly to the wider question of the threat we are under, which has been mentioned earlier, that is, cyber and hybrid attack. I know the National Cyber Security Centre, NCSC, gave out particular guidance to companies because it felt there is a higher threat. What is the situation with the Defence Forces and what is the action plan for the near future?

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