As Minister for Defence, I launched Ireland’s first National Maritime Security Strategy on 25 February. My vision for this strategy is that it will support the protection of a secure and sovereign Ireland, where our people and interests are protected, and where our European and international partners can rely on us to uphold the rule of law in the maritime domain.
This first strategy focuses on risks and threats to Ireland’s national security and defence, including the protection of our critical maritime infrastructure, particularly critical undersea infrastructure. My reason for this focus on critical infrastructure in our maritime domain is because many major undersea cables land on our shores or transit through our EEZ carrying significant amounts of global internet traffic and financial data. In addition, our energy sector is heavily supported by subsea gas pipelines and electricity interconnectors. There are also plans advancing to develop significant offshore renewable facilities in our waters.
The Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment is working with Eirgrid to deliver the Celtic Interconnector. This is a high-voltage subsea power cable that will link the electricity grids of Ireland and France and will play an important role in Ireland’s energy security. This, and other such infrastructure in our maritime domain, is vulnerable to hybrid threats resulting from the evolving geo-political situation.
My focus is now on implementation of the National Maritime Security Strategy and the operationalisation of its accompanying action plan so that I can deliver this new, whole-of-government approach to protecting the security of our maritime domain, in cooperation with international partners and the private sector, and in accordance with our international legal rights and obligations.
The implementation of the strategy is taking place against the backdrop of significant increases in our own national defence spending in the past few years, including government’s record €1.7 billion capital investment in Defence over the next five years, an increase of €600 million, or 55%, on the previous baseline. This will facilitate significant progress on important defence projects, including military radar and subsea awareness.
In the meantime, I do want to assure the Deputy that the Defence Forces routinely monitor all foreign vessels in our maritime domain with both Naval Service assets and Air Corps maritime patrol aircraft, as well as remote monitoring on a 24/7 basis from the Naval Operations Command Centre in Haulbowline.
Question No. 129 answered with Question No. 90.
