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

In terms of the other issue Deputy O'Meara raised, I have dealt with some of the aspects of what happened on the night and so forth. In terms of the EU Presidency, which people have raised, there is a lot of work under way to prepare for that. An Garda Síochána is central to the security planning and preparation. It has established a dedicated European Union Presidency co-ordination office, led by the deputy commissioner of policing operations to oversee all aspects of operational planning, logistics and inter-agency engagement. There is ongoing interdepartmental engagement through a whole range of forums. Close co-operation with European policing and security partners concerning the Presidency is ongoing, as per the norm.
In the modern security arena, you have to co-ordinate, co-operate and share intelligence with other agencies. That is absolutely key. Otherwise, you are at nothing in terms of protecting the State or protecting our people. I do not want to go into all of the details here. Some of this is security sensitive. I have a report about the drone situation. When we are discussing security, there has to be an understanding there are limits to what can be put into the public domain. That impacts further gathering and garnering of intelligence. It also impacts on our capacity to withstand further threats and so on like that. There will be a lot of planning for VIP protection, venue security, transport management, cyber resilience and public order contingencies. All of that is being worked on. It is a mammoth task. It is a huge operation. Other member states have had to do something similar. It is symptomatic of where we are in terms of the threats to European security and so forth.
I think I have dealt with most of the issues Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh raised and I was responding to her in respect of that.

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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