Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

None of them are combat vessels; excellent. We need to have a candid conversation about sub-sea infrastructure and the shadow fleet because that is the other context in which this arises. We could have the finest combat vessels available patrolling every inch of Irish waters, but most of the sub-sea infrastructure we are talking about also runs outside of our territorial waters. In those situations, we would be completely unable to do anything to protect those cables, no matter what kind of ships we had. We know this because it has happened on the edges of the waters of NATO member states in the Baltics. While combat vessels may provide an opportunity to virtue signal to other EU countries about our willingness to take part in an arms race, the reality is that our capacity and fleet is best served by equipping them for humanitarian and disaster relief and surveillance. MRVs can monitor cables and foreign vessels and can also save lives on a scale that MRCVs cannot. It is comforting to hear that there are no plans to invest in combat vessels. I will be holding the Tánaiste to account on that.

See this speech in context