Niall O'Connor

THE TAOISEACH HAS pushed back on statements by the head of the Irish Military Intelligence Service (IMIS) who claimed China is a hostile state towards Ireland. 

Last weekend an officer in IMIS was quoted in a Sunday newspaper defining China as a “hostile state actor” the Irish military has a “concern about”. There was also criticism reported by the military officer of educating Chinese nationals in Irish universities.

On Monday The Journal spoke to Taoiseach Micheál Martin in regard to national and international security topics.

He is due to travel on a high-profile trade mission to China in the coming weeks and we asked if he was comfortable with the characterisation of China as a threat to Ireland. 

“It’s interesting. There’s no doubt that in the medium to long term, China would be a very significant world power and that’s not changing anytime soon, and China will defend its interests.

“I do accept the intelligence that’s across Europe and UK recently but on the other hand, China has never initiated, in modern times, a war.

“I had a very interesting, pretty careful discussion with the Singaporean Prime Minister on that. We should do more to understand the Chinese psyche and approach, and the more longer term sort of scenario, strategic thinking,” he said. 

The Taoiseach said there was a wide-ranging discussion last week between EU leaders at the European Council around geoeconomics and he said connections with China featured widely during that. 

Martin said China has been growing its global economic footprint for up to 40 years and in comparison he criticised the European commitment to short-termism. 

“The danger with all that is we don’t want to end up in a sort of protectionist, polarised world,” he added. 

‘Rebalance’

The Taoiseach said in the early 2000s, because of globalisation, China became the manufacturing hub of the world but that now there is an effort to pull back from that. 

Martin said that there needs to be a conscious effort to engage with China to sell materials produced here in Ireland in the Asian market. He said Ireland has a huge economic relationship with China but he added there is a need “to rebalance the relationship”.

He said there is a complex set of policies needed to push forward with the relationship between China, Ireland and the EU.

The Taoiseach said supports the Nordic perspective of free trade and said it has worked for Ireland but said that he also appreciates the French concept of “strategic autonomy”. 

Martin believes the rebalance should be a focus around creating more computer chip and microprocessor manufacturing in Europe and the US. 

“I think isolation would be the wrong approach completely. But they are a significant power,” he added. 

No prior knowledge

Ireland currently has two intelligence agencies as An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces are both involved in their own information gathering. 

The Journal asked the Taoiseach was the lack of prior knowledge by the two agencies of the drone incident, during the President Zelenskyy, visit a failure. 

I wouldn’t think so. There was always a potential of this happening, it was a successful security operation.

He added: “I think that this is getting lost and there’s a lot of noise around security issues all the time and there is always an attempt to portray Ireland as a sort of a basket case.

“I think our intelligence service works well, has very good relationships across the world and is very useful in certain scenarios.

“I’ve seen it at work, and I’m well briefed now before I go to European meetings, and I know what’s happening,” he added.

National Security Council

The Taoiseach said that the establishment of a National Security Council (NSC) was proving successful and that it will enable a greater examination of topics around securing Ireland. 

There was no mention by Martin of the recent criticism of a lack of engagement with the Joint Committee on Defence and National Security but he did say the committee should act as a “layer” below the NSC.

Martin said a recent briefing by the NSC, lead by gardaí and the Defence Forces specialists, said that the drones did not pose a threat to civilian aircraft. 

He said the State does need to be mindful that it is similar to other incidents in Europe involving drone sightings.

Martin said he had, in meetings, supported the view that the continued hybrid attacks such as drone incursions and arsons were a sign that Vladimir Putin’s behaviour was growing in recklessness. 

The Taoiseach said there was now a meaningful engagement to equip the Irish security services with counter drone technology.

He explained that he did not believe, however, that the issues associated with the hybrid threats can be merely solved by “throwing money at the problem”. 

Martin said that the protection of critical infrastructure from attack does need “hardware” but following a recent discussion with a senior official in NATO, he believes that it is a “battle of mathematics”.