Irish Naval Service

I mean, I...

I hope my political awakening, well, no, probably it wasn't my political awakening too, but one that just always stuck in my head was I remember Neil O'Martin criticizing the sorry state of the Irish Navy.

And he had literally been, his previous post had been Minister for Defence.

It's

Just got it made, yeah

... uh, your, your look at the sea was through your father, wasn't it? He was in the, in the Irish Navy.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

That's why I'm announcing a package of €1.6 billion for the Department of Defence for 2027, an increase of almost 9%.

It will support an intake of 850 new permanent Defence Force members next year, increases for Air Corps and Naval Service equipment, national preparedness and resilience funding, IT investment for digital transformation and the Joint Cyber Operations Unit.

and healthcare and medical services for the Defence Forces.

€340 million of NDP funding will support the delivery of new helicopters in the military radar programme, targeted investment in capabilities including maritime surveillance and cybersecurity, and the modernisation and upgrade of military installations throughout our country.

Um, and you know, this is water through which seventy-five percent of transatlantic cables pass.

It is occasionally pestered by vessels, uh, of Russia's shadow fleet, and, you know, the Irish Navy, such as it is, consists of four patrol boats named after poets.

The, the concern is not even strategic so much as a sense that Ireland isn't pulling its weight.

I remember, um, giving a speech on European defense in, um, Lithuania, and the first question was, "Well, what, what have you got to say about this because you're Irish?" There's a general feeling that Ireland isn't putting its weight, that Ireland at least has the financial resources to contribute, even if people can understand that maybe they don't have the military culture or the structures to do it.

He used to work overtime.

He was a fitter mechanic in the Irish Navy, and he would often work until 9:00 PM, and but on the days that he was off, I would insist that we go birding, and looking back at it now, he was obviously exhausted, and he would bring me down to Coskenny, uh, the nature reserve in Cove, and I remember passing a tree, and, like, once I started, I didn't want to go home, and I would keep adding sights, chants in my arm, and I said, "Oh my God, there's waxwings in that tree." Waxwings should not...

You know, they're not a typical bird in Ireland.

You, you get records every now and then.

So if you can imagine there, you and Karen are sitting on the roof of your house, right? And the floodwaters are rising because we all need to build an ark.

And the boat is coming along, the Irish Navy boat, which has 43 million people on it because they've only got two of them, coming along to rescue you.

Maybe they won't let you on unless...

Unless you have your documents.

He was really happy.

He had just been accepted into the Irish Navy as an uncommissioned officer, mechanical engineer.

Hisself and his long-term girlfriend, Ava, who he was with for almost nine years from school days, were making their own plans for the future.

looking for land to build their own home, talking about marriage and children and so on.

Security is not scaremongering.

Whenever Dublin hosted a security conference with Kiev, who protected the island of Ireland? It wasn't the Irish Navy.

It was the United Kingdom Royal Navy.

We benefit greatly from being a part of the sixth largest economy in the world.