Politicians in Ireland must be able to debate security and defence issues affecting the State without always being accused of being “obsessed with the military-industrial complex”, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Neale Richmond has said.
“If we’re talking about our own family homes, we don’t think anything about getting a house alarm,” he told the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly (BIPA), which was meeting in Weybridge in Surrey, England, on Monday.
Ireland’s geographic location is no protection from cyber and hybrid threats orchestrated by Russia, the Fine Gael politician told the parliamentary assembly, which includes politicians from Ireland, Britain, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
“In the past, our geographic position had been seen by many to mitigate our security risks. But in the age of online connectivity, this is quite simply no longer the case,” he told the assembly.
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Russia has embarked on “an increasingly reckless and intensified hybrid campaign against Europe, including sabotage, attempts at electoral interference, spreading disinformation, cyberattacks, and disruption of critical infrastructure,” he said.
However, he said, politicians should not be afraid to debate security and defence issues, despite the evidence that just 1 per cent of people in the Republic place security at the top of their list of their concerns.
“We have to be able to talk about the security of our countries without someone driving us down the rabbit hole that somehow we’re obsessed with the military-industrial complex or [having] obscure conversations about how one defines neutrality,” he declared.
Ireland is “militarily neutral, but we are not politically neutral”, he said, and “we remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine to help it defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
The 10-year-old Ireland-UK memorandum of understanding on defence co-operation “continues to work well”, he said.
“Listening to the media, it’s a novelty to some people that this actually exists, but it’s no secret that it’s something that works well”
“The memorandum of understanding has been up and running for 10 years, it’s worked well, and provides an absolute template of what can come next,” the Minister of State told the Assembly.
The European Union was “acting with decisiveness, ambition, and speed” to counter Russian threats, he said: “Ireland, therefore, must be a part of this process because we are part of the EU, but also because such threats pose existential risks to the way we live our lives.”
Noting that the world had changed since BIPA was set up in 1990, former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy said he was “not quite sure” every jurisdiction represented in the assembly “have quite got to grips” with the challenges, including the British.
“The threats now are very different. The real unpleasant actors don’t play by the rules any more,” he said, pointing to the damage done by a Russian cyberattack in Estonia that “devastated” IT systems in schools, infrastructure, and elsewhere.
“I do think that we have to be very conscious that the people who are nasty people in this world won’t take into account any constitutions, or international agreements. They play by different rules.”
