Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is strange that every time I come into the Seanad for the Order of Business, something derails my line of thought. Senator Doherty has certainly derailed mine today. I have a sister who lost two children at full term. I cannot begin to tell the House the pain that she has felt in her life at the loss of those children. I fully support what Senator Doherty is trying to do. I offer my deepest sympathies to Caroline and Martin Smith, who are in the Gallery.

I congratulate the Acting Leader on his elevation. I spent four days in Estonia at the Tallinn Digital Summit, the lead summit in the area of cybersecurity and digital security. I was rather disappointed that there was no other Irish representative present from official Ireland. The summit was attended by prime ministers, ministers and senior civil servants from all over the world. One of the key topics for those whom I met, as an Irishman, was Ireland's lack of defence capability, given that 95% of the world's data cross the Atlantic into Europe. We do not know what is going on beneath our sea and it has been the fault of countless Governments for running our Defence Forces into the ground.

I reviewed the recent statement made by the Minister for Defence, Deputy Coveney, in the House. I was not here for the debate with him. He does not answer questions but talks down the clock. That is all the Minister does. I then opened a newspaper to see that a private security firm had been employed to look at the cables coming into Ireland. It was somewhat hard to understand whether this involved electrical cables, gas pipes or data cables. It does not matter. Are we at the stage now where we outsource the security of the State to some private security company? That is beyond acceptable. For this reason, I wish to move an amendment to the Order of Business to ask the Minister to come to the House - I do not care if it is at 10 o'clock tonight - to explain to the people of Ireland how we have allowed our country to finish up in a situation where our Naval Service is virtually inoperable, we do not have an air force and depend instead on the RAF and we-----