James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the report. The consultative forum was a very useful exercise and I am glad the Tánaiste and the Government initiated it. It was a very meaningful debate. Unfortunately, I was abroad on other committee business at the time it was held and was unable to attend, but I followed it closely and have read its recommendations.

A view may have been expressed by some members of the Opposition earlier, which I have heard in the media since the report was published, that the consultation forum was a Trojan horse, which failed to sneak its cargo into Government buildings. That is not borne out in any objective review of the report. What strikes me as being front and centre, at least in the executive summary, and in the detail of the report is that there are multiple recommendations for change. At the very least, it has identified multiple deficiencies, areas for improvement and change-strategies we should adopt. It certainly highlights that the system is broken and needs to be fixed. That comes through loudly in the report.

I will take the executive summary as my guide. The first issue is a point Deputy Berry often makes about the need to have a national conversation about these matters. It is a normal, healthy thing to do. It should not be verbotenand that we cannot talk about security or neutrality in the Chamber or committees. National security and defence should be a bread and butter issue in the same way as health, the economy, housing and everything else is. Perhaps it may occupy less time in our debating schedule, but it is every bit as important and should be a normal part of the political debate, as it is in most mature countries. Why would it not be so? The debate has been very useful in that sense. It has put the issue centre stage. We have had a national conversation, which is proof of our maturity as a society and I hope as a political society.

I will move on to some other points. First, I highlight the need for greater public expenditure on the three branches of the Defence Forces. I welcome the Government's recent commitment around the naval branch. As a member of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, I visited the Haulbowline Naval Base last year and, as when we visited The Curragh and other military encampments, I was made aware by the staff and personnel serving there of the need for greater supports and investment, with pay and conditions being paramount and recruitment and retention being a challenge. There is also a need to invest. I looked at the consideration of options 1, 2 and 3 from the Commission on the Defence Forces in the recent consultation. The Government opted for the middle road, which is option 2. Option 1 is a standstill, which effectively means going backwards. Option 2 is increased investment and support and option 3 is perhaps a higher order defence capability. The Government sensibly went for option 2. It was the minimum we could do in the circumstances. Unfortunately, some members of the Opposition took issue with that. They thought we should fall back to option 1. If there had been an option 0, I suspect some of them would have liked to take it. Some of the voices advocating that view are those who proclaim our neutrality the loudest. If we are to be a seriously neutral nation, we must be able to defend ourselves at the very least. We cannot have sovereignty if we cannot defend ourselves. I hope that is better understood as a result of this exercise.

Another topic that was highlighted has featured in the debate today, namely our maritime infrastructure and cyber infrastructure. I am classing them together, but they are separate. I have made the point in this Chamber in these debates in the past year or more that part of the foundation of our economy is our intellectual fire power, the research and development capacity we have, the knowledge economy we hold and support and the fact that we successfully attract, not only a vibrant indigenous economy of start-ups and enterprises, but also multinational corporations in the technology, pharmaceuticals, life sciences and advanced research spaces, which base themselves in Ireland for all kinds of reasons, not least that we have an educated workforce, we are an EU member state, we are English speaking and they enjoy being located here. That offering is essential to our economic package and our economic prosperity. We must protect those intellectual assets, including the data. Some 40% of the EU's data sets are housed in Ireland, largely because the Data Protection Commissioner for Europe is here. We need to protect that. If we cannot protect and safeguard the cables that carry that data across the Atlantic as the bridge between Europe, the Middle East and Africa and North America, for many companies, we cannot protect much at all. If we cannot keep our front and back doors protected, there is not much point in having a lovely house that is painted inside. It is a minimal requirement and it goes back to the sub-sea cables, which we heard a lot of debate about.

A few moments ago another Deputy said it is like a bit of sticking plaster at the moment. We have seen significant activity of radar aircraft and vessels circling over the spaghetti junctions at critical points in the infrastructure. That is not being done for charitable reasons or with good intent. It is being done quite clearly to intimidate and put the alarm out that it can be done, or perhaps to intercept some of the data, but it is not good for Ireland's economic offering or for anyone who is following that space. The other issue that arises with the sub-sea cables, as another politician commented recently, is that many of the threats or snags that arise are from fishing vessels. That is absolutely correct. Fishing vessels frequently encounter sub-sea cables, which causes problems. Equally fishing vessels are sometimes intercepted by submarines. There is a large amount of submarine activity in our waters and beyond. That is not helpful to the fishing fleets either. We have the same Submarine Telegraph Act 1885 as Australia and New Zealand, as it was passed in the late 1800s before independence. It governs the law around sub-sea cables. It is still in force today, but other jurisdictions, including Australia and New Zealand, have taken it further and put in the equivalent of a no-fly zone around the cables. In New Zealand, fishing vessels or any other commercial vessels do not sail over the location of the critical infrastructure of cables. It is not difficult to do. We have the same parent Act. With a few amendments we could bring it into law here. It would save fishing vessels a lot of expense and inconvenience, not to mention the operators of the cables, for whom the cost is in the multiple hundreds of thousands every time one of those snags occurs. That is to start with the bare basics as regards protection and security. It is not a hostile threat, but it is a threat that occurs nonetheless.

The other point in the cyber space is disinformation campaigns. Yesterday or the day before, a report was issued on disinformation campaigns that are active in Ireland. The problem of what they bring to the debate and the prevalence of hostile actors, including state actors, was largely attributed to the far right, but it is across every spectrum of a debate. China and Russia were mentioned in the report. Meta produces a threat advisory every six months. It has been well documented and born out in evidence that state actors are interfering in this space. It is not difficult or expensive to do. If a hostile state wants to weaken western liberal democracies and it can sow the seeds of discord, why would it not? It is an easy, quick, cheap and effective thing to do. It is not healthy for our democracy or society and we need to safeguard against it.

I was glad to see a recommendation that we have continual multilateral arrangements to co-operate with other member states. We do so already. We are a member of the EU, PESCO, the United Nations and various other alliances. NATO is often held up as a bogeyman figure.

I was coming into Leinster House earlier today and there were protesters outside with an anti-NATO sign. That is fine. I do not carry any particular torch for NATO, although I do think some of the exercises we have participated in, including sub-sea cable and marine training, can be very useful. There is this thing about NATO wars. What wars are we talking about? The Iraq war was not a NATO war. The war in the Balkans was. NATO went in and stopped an absolute massacre that was about to take place across the Balkans. The reaction to the attacks on 11 September 2001 could be argued to be a NATO response. By and large, some countries that are members of NATO participate in wars. They are not NATO wars. If the US bombs somewhere, it is not a NATO war; it is a US war. I think those concepts are confused all the time.

If we look at the countries that are in NATO, Canada and the US are members, although some might argue with its policies, and there are European nations that are proud members of it. They are actually our friends. They are countries we would look to ideologically, and places that we have much more in common in with than the alternative, which is the likes of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas. They are not organisations that I hold any torch for or see any common ground with whatsoever. Sometimes, listening to Members in different parts of this House, one might think that there is some kind of equivalence and we are somewhere in the middle between the two. We are not. I am not, anyway. I stand with the West and liberal democracy against those totalitarian theocratic regimes that try to take down everything we stand for.

On the neutrality point, I listened with great interest to a number of Deputies. Deputy Tóibín has left the Chamber but he talked about Wolfe Tone. I am always fascinated that when this discussion arises the suggestion is made that our neutrality is a sacred cow which has been there for centuries. Let us take Wolfe Tone as an example. Wolfe Tone was one of our proud republican patriots. I visit his grave every year at my party's commemoration and pay many personal visits each year as well. He was an officer in the French Navy who commissioned the French Navy to come to Bantry Bay as part of the 1798 rebellion and sought international assistance for the republican cause. When 1916 came around and Pearse and company were in the GPO, the Proclamation mentioned "gallant allies abroad" supporting the Proclamation and the rising. Rolling forward to 1960, when the new Republic had been declared, and proudly so, Seán Lemass, in his Oxford Union speech, spoke of the possibility that Ireland, a united Ireland, would consider alliances such as NATO - the idea was actually floated at the time - and other alliances that might enable us take our place among the nations of the world. None of these republican patriots were in favour of neutrality for the sake of it and none said we must be neutral. They were all actively pursuing alliances with other countries abroad. We have always done that and we always will do that. Why would we not do it?

I get confused when people say that we are neutral. The people who seem to be saying most loudly that we must be neutral are the same voices that say that we must actively intervene in the war in Israel and Gaza at the moment. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot be neutral in one direction and not neutral in the other direction. I do not personally believe we are neutral. I think we have a long, proud history of alliances with many countries, as I have just said. We cannot have it every way and only be neutral when it suits us. I commend the report and look forward to further debate on its recommendations.

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