The Government is to establish a new National Security Council comprising Cabinet ministers, Garda and Defence Forces chiefs and senior officials.
The new council, which has been approved by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, will begin meeting within weeks and is part of a new prioritisation of security and defence matters within government, as uncertainty about European and global security grows with the presidency of Donald Trump and the continued Russian offensive in Ukraine.
The new council, which will be chaired by the Taoiseach, will review strategic developments in Ireland’s national security, and consider reports on national and international security, officials said.
Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and for Defence Simon Harris and Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan will also be members of the council.
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In addition, the Garda Commissioner, Defence Forces Chief of Staff, the Director of the National Cyber Security Centre, as well as the secretaries general – the most senior officials – in the Departments of the Taoiseach, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Justice. The Taoiseach’s and Tánaiste’s chiefs of staff will also attend meetings, it is understood. Meetings will take place throughout the year.
The current National Security Committee, which is comprised of senior officials and chaired by the secretary general to Government, will continue to meet and will report to the new ministerial council.
A new national security secretariat will also be set up in the Department of the Taoiseach to co-ordinate to support the council and committee. It convene working groups of officials and experts to focus on delivery of actions covering security and intelligence; cyber and hybrid; international security; economic, energy and infrastructure, and transport.
The new working groups will comprise senior officials from relevant departments and State agencies, sources said.
The establishment of the new council comes as Ireland and other European Union countries seek to rapidly tool up their security and defence infrastructure in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, to the realisation that the continuation of the US security guarantee – which has existed for western Europe since the end of the second World War and for eastern Europe since the former Soviet satellite states joined Nato after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The Government has also pledged to increase spending on the Defence Forces, an area where Ireland has traditionally lagged far behind its EU partners. Ireland spends, proportionately, only a fraction of what most other EU states spend on defence.
There are also plans to invest in a new radar system to monitor Irish airspace and maritime surveillance capability to watch the subsea cables which carry internet traffic from the US to Europe and pass through Irish waters. Such cables have been repeatedly sabotaged in the Baltic Sea, with Russia the presumed culprit. Russian vessels have been repeatedly observed in waters near the cables off Ireland’s southwest coast.
The EU has also pledged to increase defence co-operation between its members, with the bloc’s leaders likely to discuss defence and security issues when they meet for a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.
The leaders have already agreed proposals aimed at changing the EU’s strict rules on debt financing in order to provide more money for rearmament.
