*TD Cathal Crowe (FF). Photograph: Joe Buckley
IRELAND must turn to new technology to help bolster its offshore and infrastructural security, according to Clare Fianna Fáil TD Cathal Crowe.
Deputy Crowe’s remarks come a number of months ahead of Ireland holding the EU Presidency for the latter half of 2026, with Minister Thomas Byrne recently confirming that security and defence will be a central theme of that tenure.
According to Deputy Crowe, “Ireland urgently needs to beef up its defence forces and acquire new capacities to monitor offshore undersea cables and critical infrastructure, including our gas pipelines, fibre broadband network and national electricity grid.
“I believe that robotics, including submersible remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), airborne drones and a whole array of smart technology including thermal imaging, sonar pinging, and video monitoring needs to be deployed.
“Ultimately, Ireland needs to develop a national laboratory for robotics and at the moment, without such a laboratory, Ireland is very much an outlier within the European Union.
“Most other European Union countries have embraced the idea of robotics, drones and remotely operated submersibles for many years now and they are investing heavily in research and development in these fields and do so through their national robotic labs.
“I have been to visit the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIS) in the University of Limerick on several occasions and have brought the Taoiseach and a number of other ministerial colleagues to visit the site.
“The technology at CRIS is incredible and so too is the expertise and innovations happening on-site. I think that they would be the perfect entity to help Ireland establish a national laboratory for robotics and also to advise our state on future technology.
“With Ireland set to host the European Union Presidency later this year, we need to urgently improve our capacity to monitor our coastline and the critical infrastructure that lies on our seabed.
“Whilst the naval fleet and our Air Corps play a major role in this, I think it could be cheaper and quicker to acquire drones and remotely operated submersibles that could augment this.
“This could take some time and funding and a lot of initiative, but I think that the planning must start now.”
