Ireland may be targeted by hostile actors in 2026 as it hosts the European Union presidency, and there is “considerable” concern it lacks capacity to defend against such attacks, a new paper has warned.
The joint report by think tank the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) and consultancy Deloitte Ireland called for increased public awareness and Government adaptation to “the risks of a now dangerous world”.
“Ireland’s security environment is at its most complex, most challenging, and most dangerous point in recent history,” warned the paper, called Secure Together.
“Of greatest concern is that the possibility of an armed attack on an EU member state, and its reverberating consequences for Ireland, are no longer outside the bounds of possibility.”
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The report noted the risk of cascading fallout from an attack on Ireland’s electricity infrastructure and flagged Dublin Port as a particular vulnerability because it “represents a significant single point of failure in the national supply chain”.
“Food would start to disappear from shop shelves within three days if there was a material adverse event there,” the report read.
The paper was based on discussions with senior representatives in financial services, communications, energy infrastructure operations, the tech sector, think tanks, academics and Government agencies.
Business leaders reported that private sector organisations are “increasingly the direct targets of hybrid warfare”, including cyberattacks, disinformation, espionage and the targeting of critical infrastructure.
Some expressed concerns about “increased targeting by overseas intelligence services”, with one tech sector representative saying they have had to increase awareness of the risk of Russia, China or India attempting to place spies within their organisations.
The report noted that last year Germany and the United States foiled a plot, attributed to Russia, to assassinate the chief executive of a German defence company that supplies weapons to Ukraine.
“With large numbers of organisations in Ireland directly involved in countering Russian cyber threats in Ukraine, implementing sanctions on Russian officials, and involved in countering disinformation, it is not outside the realm of possibility that there could be threats to those organisations or their people,” the report warned.
About 50 European leaders are due to visit Ireland next year when it assumes the rotating six-month EU presidency, which may be seen by hostile actors as “an opportunity for disruption and to cause harm”, the report warned.
“Ireland’s defence deficits are increasingly being noted internationally, leading to a growing perception that Ireland is putting our own security and the security of our neighbours at risk,” it said.
The representatives who took part in the debates said it was “challenging” to discuss threats to the Irish State without opening a contentious debate on the related but separate issue of neutrality.
“Those who are supportive of increased defence expenditure tended to be perceived, often incorrectly, as proponents of Ireland joining Nato,” it read.
The report called for the debate about basic national security, defence and resilience to be “decoupled” from discussion about neutrality.
“Neutrality means Ireland as a nation has to be able to identify threats to our security, provide an appropriate level of deterrence, and if necessary, defend effectively against these threats,” it said.
The report recommended that Ireland should develop an overarching National Security Strategy and increase funding to the Office of Emergency Planning to allow it to co-ordinate and prepare for national responses to crises.
It urged the Government to communicate the kind of risks Ireland faces to the public to build societal resilience, perhaps by issuing a pamphlet to households explaining how to keep safe in a major national crisis as other European countries have done.
