Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. We are all looking forward to debating the report of the Commission on the Future of the Defence Forces. I welcome the indications by the Minister for Defence, Deputy Simon Coveney, that there will be an increase in defence spending of the order of about €500 million, although, on the basis of the recommendations within the commission report, this could be viewed as somewhat conservative, even though it is about a 50% increase. The commission set out very clearly that it believes we should be looking at being ambitious to bring Ireland in line in our spending on defence with similar-sized EU countries. If we take the example of Finland, one of our fellow non-aligned countries and of similar size, it currently has a budget of €2.8 billion, almost three times that of Ireland, and recently announced an increase of €2 billion in spending.

The Minister of State may be aware of the comments yesterday by the Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Seán Clancy, around the adequacy of the Defence Forces. This Commencement matter had been tabled in advance of his address but he did make the point that if we are to ensure that we can protect our sovereignty, particularly in light of what has happened in Ukraine, then we must have adequate investment in our Defence Forces.

My question today is around Ireland's defence capabilities in the event of an attack. People traditionally think about attacks as soldiers on the ground, marching over a border and invading a country, as we have seen in Ukraine, but that is not the nature of modern warfare. What we see increasingly is incursions into airspace, into our maritime area and, more and more, in cyberspace. I do not believe that Ireland is sufficiently well defended, nor do I believe we can defend our sovereignty in the event of an attack from an alien power.

If we look at some of the specific areas, for example, in terms of a potential air incursion, we have inadequate radar to be able to pick that up. Where we have had incidents in the past of Russian aircraft illegally operating in Irish space, we rely on the Royal Air Force to defend us in those circumstances.Not so long ago we had a maritime incursion. In this hybrid attack by Russia, which was an invasion of our sovereignty, we saw Russian warships based off the south-west coast of Ireland. Had they done anything to the transatlantic cables, the damage to our country, economically and socially, would have been enormous. Last year we saw what I would regard as a terrorist attack, the cyberattack on the HSE. We will see more and more of those. It is not unreasonable to expect that if Ireland votes in a particular way at the UN Security Council, all the traffic lights in Dublin will go down.

This is not the world of science fiction; it is the reality of what we are facing. As we are now having debates on food security and energy security, we need our debates on defence capability to be broader than those simply focused on the Department of Defence. We should co-operate with Sweden, Finland, Austria and the other non-aligned countries. I hope the Minister of State will answer my questions on behalf of the Department today. What are our defence capabilities at present in these areas? What measures will we take to address them?