Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-25
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

-----like Ford and Dunlop closing, the Verolme dockyard closing and the Sunbeam-Wolsey plant closing. Thousands of jobs were lost. It was a very difficult decade. I have never lost the memory of what it was like in the city of Cork and many cities across the country. Part of the renovation and rejuvenation of this country - even if the Deputy might not like it - was the fact the likes of Microsoft came to this country in 1985. It has been here more than 40 years. Apple came in 1980 and it has grown. It is workers who have benefited. Ordinary people, who have career opportunities, have benefited from that. We can be critical, and we have to stand back and analyse the agendas, etc., but these are the basic facts for the ordinary people that the Deputy is supposed to represent.
When we say that we want to protect critical undersea infrastructure, if anything happened to cables or the gas connectors with Britain, we would not have an economy in ten days, in terms of the gas interconnection.
Is the Deputy saying we should not co-operate with Britain to protect the gas interconnectors with the United Kingdom and we should just ignore it? Is he saying we should ignore all of our European partners in protecting critical undersea infrastructure such as subsea cables and the interconnector with France, which will be completed in the next year or two and will guarantee energy security for our people?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-25