Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply. Unfortunately, the security situation worldwide has deteriorated drastically since 2022 and, of course, our country is not immune from those difficulties and those challenges. We never pay enough tribute to the work of the emergency services in this country, including how they protected us and our State during a very troubled era. I am thinking of An Garda Síochána, the Permanent Defence Force, the fire services, all the health services, including emergency health services, the Civil Defence, our local authorities and many others. At that time there was a huge knowledge built up in the Border area among those personnel who were based locally.

Recently, I have been raising constantly with An Tánaiste the possibility of having the former Dún Uí Néill barracks in Cavan reopened. At the moment, the Army structure in our country is such that we have Finner Camp in south Donegal and Aiken Barracks in Dundalk. The central Border area does not have a barracks. That is huge land Border, as the Taoiseach knows, with a neighbouring jurisdiction. I believe that the Dún Uí Néill barracks, which the Taoiseach visited from an ETB point of view some time ago, when most of the barracks was still intact, should be used, at least initially, as a forward operating base prior to its re-establishment as a full barracks. There was animal disease in this country. We had to deal with the security situation. The knowledge of the personnel based locally is not on any file. It is being lost now because we do not have those personnel based in that area. We can never factor enough into our thinking local knowledge or the people locally making decisions in barracks, Garda stations or whatever.

I would like the Taoiseach, along with the Tánaiste, to consider the reopening of Dún Uí Néill, initially as a forward operating base, because of the particular challenges that face us in that area with a long land Border with a neighbouring jurisdiction. Unfortunately, paramilitarism has not ceased entirely.

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