National Security
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-16
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Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

I commend the men and women of the Defence Forces on the fantastic work they do. In my time as Minister for Defence, my priority will be investing in them and their capabilities, including their ability to respond to emerging threats. It is also important to acknowledge the historic role our troops have played in peacekeeping. That will continue to be a focus and priority.
Regarding the changing environment and changing threats, so much has moved to cyber threats. It is an issue that is raised regularly with all of us by companies small and large and by our agencies as well. It is vitally important that we continually invest in all our abilities to respond to these types of threats. I mentioned in response to an earlier question the investment that is going into technologies within the Defence Forces to enable them to identify and reject these types of threats. There has been huge investment in recent years in An Garda Síochána. Through the Department of enterprise, working with IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, there has also been huge investment to ensure businesses are alert to these types of threats, are able to respond to them and know exactly who to go when these types of incidents occur. We all need to work collectively on this issue. A huge amount of funding will be spent on the Defence Forces and, with that, we will make sure the right structures and resources are in place to protect that investment.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-16