The development of Galway Port is overdue and welcome. It is also very timely given the strategic threats to Ireland’s national security.
It has long been recognised that Ireland needs to significantly increase its maritime security capabilities. The opening of a naval base will be especially important if the State wishes to deter and push back against an increase in hostile state activity, and that of serious organised crime groups off our western seaboard.
The Irish state claims that its jurisdiction runs to one million square kilometres of ocean – approximately thirteen times the landmass of the country. It is reasonable to expect that a navy would be the primary military service for an island like ours, perhaps with contingents of marines and a fleet air arm focused on carrying out maritime protection duties, but adaptable to land operations as required.
Instead, the Naval Service is a relatively small part of our Defence Forces; under-staffed and, until recently, poorly equipped. Some senior roles in the Defence Forces have been exclusively reserved for the army. The current fleet includes four offshore patrol vessels and two large patrol vessels. However, Naval Operations Command in Haulbowline in Cork has often struggled to put vessels to sea due to chronic recruitment and retention issues.
Ireland’s vulnerabilities have not gone unnoticed, by both our European partners, and hostile states.
The government’s 2024 Defence Review observed that Ireland’s maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ ) was being targeted by the Russian military and organised crime groups. A planned increase in military radar and sonar systems to detect such activity in the future is a step towards addressing these threats. So too is a commitment by the government to draft a new maritime security strategy.
Through military exercises and intelligence-gathering in Ireland’s EEZ, Russia is searching for weaknesses it can exploit in the event of widening hostilities in Europe, including fibreoptic cables vital for global communications, and critical energy pipelines.
Moscow is also assessing the capabilities of European militaries, including our own, to respond to such incursions. In the Irish Sea, Russian intelligence vessels appear to be gathering intelligence on Britain’s submarine fleet, headquartered at Faslane on the west coast of Scotland, occasionally weaving their way in and out of Ireland’s EEZ as they do so. We suspect foreign actors are probing transatlantic cables off our west coast too.
Increased Russian military activity off Ireland’s east coast has helped to make the case for a new naval facility at Dún Laoghaire. The addition of Galway as a prospective site for a future naval base will finally address the ludicrous absence of a significant naval installation on our western seaboard to rapidly respond to emerging threats.
Ireland is a member of the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (Narcotics ), an initiative of eight EU member states and the United Kingdom, formed to share intelligence, improve cooperation and response times, and carry out joint operations when necessary. The sophistication and threats from major organised crime syndicates, including from South America, has grown exponentially over the last decade, involving the use of submarines and other craft that are difficult to detect, including drug-filled torpedoes towed by ships, which have washed up in Galway Bay.
Ireland had commensurately increased naval exercises with its partners, including recently with the Netherlands and Portugal. Drug smugglers have taken full advantage of the lightly policed western coastline of Ireland; expanding the naval service’s presence in Galway will be a vital component of addressing that weakness.
Finally, few cities or towns in Ireland have as much connection to, and skill with, the sea as Galway. If the Naval Service is going to address its recruitment crisis it should draw upon the places where Ireland’s greatest sailors have always hailed from. I have no doubt that Galway will offer an exceptional welcome to our navy sailors. That prestige may in itself do wonders for the Naval Service.
Dr Edward Burke is University College Dublin’s Assistant Professor in the History of War since 1945
