The strategic importance of subsea cables and power lines running through Irish waters and our limited ability to guard them is an issue of national and international concern. But less so in the Dáil, it appears, where the Taoiseach felt compelled to remind his colleagues of the gravity of the situation and need to get over any “squeamishness” about an agreement made last year with Nato covering cyber and sub-sea security.
His remarks in response to gently lobbed questions from three members of his own party must be seen in the context of the presidential election and the somewhat maximalist position on Irish neutrality adopted by Independent candidate Catherine Connolly.
But that does not make the Taoiseach wrong. A spate of suspicious incursions by Russian vessels into Irish waters in recent years has highlighted the risks of sabotage and our limited ability to counter them. The agreement with Nato – referred to as an Individually Tailored Partnership Programme – is intended to address the deficit.
What it means in practice has not been clarified in any detail and it parallels the agreement with the UK that allows the Royal Air Force access to Irish airspace, in effect provideing another layer of air defence.
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The uncomfortable truth is that we need such agreements – forged as they may be out of mutual self-interest – at a time of heightened geopolitical tension and hybrid warfare which has coincided with significant degradation of our defensive capabilities.
A proposal this week from the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly – which has its origin in the 1998 Belfast Agreement – that the Naval Service should mount joint patrols with the Royal Navy to protect undersea infrastructure from Russian aggression may be a bridge too far in terms of the public conception of military neutrality.
It might well also be beyond the current capabilities of the Naval service, but it would recognise the reality that out of necessity we share responsibility for securing vital underwater assets.
