There is ongoing work between An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces to ensure that when the latter need to provide an aid to civil power or support for the Garda, it happens in as seamless a way as we can make it. Ireland needs to look at its broader defence and security policy, including the relationship between An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces, whether in regard to intelligence or broader security challenges like this one. That is something the Government is considering at the moment.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 73 and 88 together. For 2023, the total allocation for the Defence group is €1.174 billion, comprising €893 million for Vote 36, Defence, and €281 million for Vote 35, Army pensions. This is an overall increase of €67 million on 2022 and double the increase last year. The allocation reflects the commitment of the Government to providing a financial platform for the defence sector to initiate the transformation of the Defence Forces, as recommended by the Commission on the Defence Fo…

I will answer Deputy Richmond's second question first. Work being undertaken includes the provision of a new cadet school in the Curragh Camp, the development of the university students administrative complement, USAC, student facility in Galway, the development of a new military medical facility and other facilities to improve Casement Aerodrome, accommodation upgrades in multiple locations throughout the country, such as at Collins and McKee Barracks and at the naval base in Haulbowline. This year, I opened new, …

There will always be incidents that test our systems and capacity. Last year, we were talking about our experience of getting people out of Kabul. People were rightly raising the question of whether we have a medium-range lift capacity in our Defence Forces which would enable them to take people out of a part of the world where we need to get people out quickly, and what we are doing about that. Now we are being asked what our capacity is in terms of monitoring subsea cables, and what we are doing about that. We wi…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 74 and 90 together. For 2023, the total allocation for Vote 36 – defence is €893 million, which is an overall increase of €57 million on 2022, doubling the increase for defence from last year. As the Deputy said, the defence capital allocation has increased by €35 million, up to €176 million. In truth, we will spend more than €176 million on capital next year because we will have that €35 million increase and we will also have some unspent moneys in the area of pay which, in all lik…

What I did not mention previously in terms of capital investment next year was the actual physical build investment in the Defence Forces training camp at the Curragh, the development of a student facility in Galway, along with facilities improvements and accommodation upgrades in multiple different barracks locations. I should mention that. What happened with Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 is still under investigation. Clearly, those two pipelines have been the source of a lot of political focus in the months sin…

I am absolutely committed to that. We have a very large sea area at surface level and below, which, as the Deputy said, is more than ten times the size of our land surface. I suspect we are going to build offshore infrastructure worth tens if not hundreds of billions of euro not only to power Ireland but also to power other countries in Europe in the future. We are about to embark on an enormous offshore energy build programme, which, of course, will be an infrastructure we have to ensure is secure and protected in…

The White Paper on Defence, which was approved by the Government in July 2015, resulted from a comprehensive examination of defence requirements. It provides the defence policy framework for the period up to 2025. This policy framework is designed to be flexible and responsive given the dynamic nature of the security environment and enables the defence organisation to be adaptive to changing circumstances and to use resources as efficiently as possible. Within this context, the White Paper contains the Government's…

The biggest challenge we have is in personnel. At the moment, the numbers in our Defence Forces are a long way short of where we need to be. That is the case not only in the Naval Service but also in the Army and the Air Corps. We must turn the tide to start gaining momentum and achieving a sense that we are adding people each year, as a net figure. As I said earlier, if we are to achieve the targets that have been set for us by the commission, we need to add at least 3,000 people to the Permanent Defence Force in …

We are not yet where we need to be as regards planning, but we are working on that. The Chief of Staff, the Secretary General and I had a long trilateral meeting at the PDFORRA conference yesterday during which we talked predominantly about recruitment and retention, and what needs to be done in the short and medium term to turn around numbers that have been moving in the wrong direction for far too long. It is not easy to do that. For what is worth, I will put on the record that trying to attract people into the D…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 76, 105 and 110 together. As I stated when answering Question No. 72, the Naval Service, as the State's principal seagoing agency, is tasked with a variety of defence and other roles. While the main daily tasking of the Naval Service is to provide a fishery protection service in accordance with our obligations as an EU member state, it also carries out a number of other non-fisheries related tasks in tandem with maritime surveillance. The Air Corps maritime patrol squadron also supp…

I hope this is a statement of the obvious for people in this House - not all national security matters are appropriate to discuss on the floor of the Dáil. We are of course speaking to the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and his Department regarding what the Defence Forces can do to use the capacity we have to act as a deterrent and to provide as much surveillance as is reasonable. Whether it is reach capacity in respect of our Air Corps, primary radar capacity in different parts of the wor…

The new vessels are inshore patrol vessels that can be crewed with fewer people than the ships they are replacing. They are much more efficient and much more modern vessels. I hope they will arrive long before this time next year. I hope to see them in the first quarter, perhaps in January or February. They will primarily be based in the Irish Sea. They will certainly be based there in the winter months because that is what they are most suited for. The gas pipelines between the UK and Ireland, which transfer gas f…

We have aircraft now.

We have CASA aircraft but we also have PC-12s and PC-9Ms. Let us not paint the picture that we have no capacity. It is clear that we need to improve our capacity and to invest in subsea surveillance capacity in particular. That needs to be factored into the provision and equipping of new ships coming in, particularly the multirole vessel. This will be a very expensive piece of equipment and the largest ship we have ever had in our naval fleet. It will have a lot of extra capacity, both subsea and radar. However, th…

We are having the appropriate conversations with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. We are also speaking to the infrastructure owners so that we can respond with the capacity that is available to us in an appropriate way that manages risk. That is about as much as I can say for now. The attacks on Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 surprised a lot of people. They came out of nowhere. We still do not have any certainty as to who is responsible. We are pretty sure the two pipelines were delib…

I very much welcome this opportunity to engage with Members of Seanad Éireann on matters relating to the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. I look forward to hearing the contributions of Senators. The establishment of the Commission on the Defence Forces was set out in the programme for Government and was a key priority for me, as the Minister for Defence. When the commission’s report was published in February, it contained recommendations on widespread and unprecedented changes for the Defence Forces …

It is not actually as Senator Clonan describes.

We have dealt with that issue.

It is being implemented.