Ireland needs a “big stick” to stop other countries attacking the nation’s offshore energy and communication infrastructure, a defence expert has said. 

Earlier this month, Tánaiste and Minister for Defence Simon Harris launched a public consultation for Ireland’s first National Maritime Security Strategy.

The Department of Defence said it hopes to “build consensus on the diverse threats, risks, challenges and opportunities” facing the State. 

On The Pat Kenny Show, former Army officer and TD Cathal Berry said the Defence Forces need to be able to detect threats first of all. 

“We should be able to do that when the sonar comes on stream in 2027, so about two years down the track,” he said. 

“The next thing you do is you try and deter it. 

“So, it’s like if you walk around New York, you have a cop on every block. 

“High visibility policing is very important to deter crime… and high visibility naval patrolling also does the same.

“We should have that capability, we don’t.” 

A navy ship arriving into Dublin. Picture by: Alamy.com.

Dr Berry added that the country also needs to obtain a “big stick”, describing that as “probably the next step down the line”. 

He continued that Ireland is “not good at national resilience”. 

“We saw the storm last year, caused major downstream consequences all across the west coast,” he said. 

“It took us a number of weeks to recover, simply from a maritime security point of view, we’re really at sea - if you’ll pardon the pun.” 

A changing world

In future, Dr Berry said Ireland needs to accept the world is increasingly unstable and stop relying on a philosophy of, "It’ll be grand”. 

“Unfortunately, as we’ve learned over the last three five years, these black swan events are happening with much more frequency and more severity,” he said. 

“We nearly get one big one every single year; whether it was Brexit, Ukraine, the Middle East - these things are happening and we need to prepare and get ahead of them.”

Submissions for the National Maritime Security Strategy close on July 11th.

Main image:  LE Eithne on dawn patrol before sunrise near Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland. Picture by: David Creedon / Alamy Live News.