Defence Forces
Dail Éireann — 2024-10-17
============================================================

Gary Gannon (SD), Dublin Central

I appreciate that the Tánaiste cannot comment in detail on specific incidents but, looking at some incidents over the last four or five years, we seem to have a very cavalier approach to counter-intelligence and threats to the State. The Tánaiste obviously cannot comment on the recent example of Cobalt, although he did comment in the media. He said he was not briefed although a previous Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said he had been briefed. That presented an image of nobody really knowing what was going on unless they had access to some whispers in the corridor. The HSE cyberattack was another example. When that attack happened and decimated our HSE, we looked to the Minister for Defence for information, and then it was the Minister for Justice. All of a sudden it was discovered that it was the responsibility of the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, in the Department of communications. There are other examples such as munitions being flown through our airspace and nobody knowing what is or is not inside the planes. Changes in policy have happened in the past 18 months. It is the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, asking about munitions being transferred using our airspace. In a collective sense, who knows what is going on in terms of threats to our national security or infringements of our sovereignty? I understand there are different Departments but there does not seem to be any single line going through them.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-10-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:22+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-10-17