The Minister for Health has said she thinks undersea cables off the Irish coast are not sufficiently protected and the State needs to "essentially double" defence spending.
Crucial submarine cables that link Europe with the US run through Irish waters, and concerns have grown about their vulnerability to spying or potential sabotage due to mysterious attacks on key infrastructure in Europe and heightened tensions with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said the world had "changed dramatically in the last three years" and it was "very, very clear" that some infrastructure needed further protection.
"We have two very significant gas pipelines coming from the UK that are absolutely essential for our critical infrastructure," she told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
"And while there's some resilience in the cables, if one is caught, there are others that can cover it, that is much less the case with the gas pipelines."
The State's overall defence budget is a record €1.3 billion this year, part of the Government’s commitment to increase defence spending by 50 per cent by 2028 in response to growing international threats.
The allocation for 2025 is a €7 million more than the last budget. But it still leaves Ireland at the bottom of the table for defence spending in the EU as a proportion of GDP.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said that in her previous role as junior defence minister she called for a very significant expansion in the State's defence budget.
"We need to essentially double our spending on defence, and that is not to make us change our neutrality. As a neutral country you should in fact spend more on defence, not less on defence, simply as a matter of logic. And we don't, we need to have more people in our defence forces. We have the money to pay their salaries, but we struggle to recruit more and more."
Ms Carroll MacNeill said Ireland needed to maintain solidarity with other European countries facing cyber and hybrid attacks.
"Just because of our geography does not mean that we are immune to that," she said. "And I think it's important that we really feel that solidarity with our European family, our European friends, the attacks that they're facing could just as easily happen here and we should be alive to the risk."
