Undersea cables and pipelines are hugely significant for Ireland, but the thousands of kilometres of pipelines around the island’s shores are also of global significance.
With about 75% of transatlantic cables coming through Irish waters, the country has been identified as a significant ‘choke point’ by a UN expert as a result.
Vice Admiral and former Defence Forces chief of staff Doctor Mark Mellett said that it is in the Irish State’s best interest to protect these cables, which are largely put down by private companies.
“We only need to look back in the last month or two on Éowyn, the impact of that storm and what happened when we had no energy and when we had no communications,” he told The Pat Kenny Show.
“Society suffers and the citizen suffers, so it's in the interest of the State - which has an obligation to actually provide an architecture for defence and security - to actually support the private industry in this sense.
“It's a public-private partnership that's required here; that keeps an economy going, that keeps a society well.”
The Russian Federation
Traditionally, fishing trawlers accidentally pulling up these cables would have been a big issue.
However, most are now laid deep enough that this is no longer a problem, and instead, the current main threat is Russian interference.
“The Russian Federation in particular has actually pointed that it sees this type of infrastructure as something that it has its eyes on,” Dr Mellett said.
“In fact, the deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Security Council has said... they have the capability to target this infrastructure, and they believe that they're entitled to do so.
“We've seen in more recent times the activities of Russian Federation vessels - such as the Yantar and others - acting suspiciously in our jurisdiction and in our neighbour's jurisdiction.”
Dr Mellett said this is likely the reason why the Irish Government has focused on improving maritime and air defence capabilities recently.
Main image: TransPacific undersea communication cables on the ocean floor off the island of Guam, Micronesia. Image: David Fleetham / Alamy. 25 August 2014
