National Security
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-10
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I thank all Deputies who raised issues in terms of national security and the national security strategy. It reflects a growing awareness and engagement with this House, not before time, in respect of security and defence issues. There has been a wilful ignoring of these issues for far too long in the House. Particular perspectives have been taken on this. Even this morning, there were references to the United Kingdom, Europe or America as being threats. The clear threats right now in this era include a Russian threat to our security and security infrastructure. We have had engagement between Iran and Russia and North Korea and Russia. North Korean soldiers have been on European soil during a period of war, seeking to violate the territorial integrity of Ukraine and its sovereignty. These are the realities we face. We wish we were not facing these realities and we would prefer a Continent at peace and so on.
The strategy will be completed. Deputy Brabazon was the first to speak and referred to self-reliance. We will develop radar capacity, and that is very close to action in terms of procurement – a lot of work has gone into that. We need to co-operate and co-ordinate with other member states in the European Union and the United Kingdom in respect of all of these issues because a pattern has developed in terms of the emergence of these drones and the violation of the airspace of EU member states. The most notable incident occurred in Copenhagen at the time of the European Political Community meeting. Denmark sought help and advice from other EU member states at that time. There were incidents in Belgium, France, Poland, in terms of train tracks and so on, and in the Baltic Sea. We are agreed that, on the drone issue, disabling technology is important.
The visit of President Zelenskyy was very effective from a security perspective. I want to make it clear to everybody that an incident did occur on that night. A small number of unidentified drones were observed in the vicinity of a Naval Service vessel on patrol off the coast of Dublin. The drones were not a threat to President Zelenskyy's aircraft - that needs to be clear - because it had safely landed quite some time prior to the incident, nor were they a threat to his departure. An operational response was put in place that was appropriate to the circumstances by the commander of the naval vessel at the time and, subsequently, by the police and military authorities working in close co-operation. They worked closely together in advance of the visit and so on.
The Garda liaised with its Ukrainian partners throughout the visit of the President on the security arrangements, including with regard to this incident. The Garda special detective unit is carrying out an investigation of the circumstances of the incident with input from the Defence Forces. It is a very concerning incident, as I said, like other similar incidents in other European states. The circumstances are suggestive of this being part of an ongoing Russian-inspired hybrid campaign against European Union and Ukrainian interests.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:27+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-10