Ireland's national defence and resilience debate
"National resilience requires a joined approach of both government and society. That’s where we come in."
Shane Mohan, National Government & Public Services Leader at Deloitte Ireland.
Cyber-attacks, disinformation campaign, foreign interference and sabotage of critical infrastructure. It sounds more like the plot of a political thriller, yet increasingly these are real-world risks reshaping how countries, including Ireland, think about security and resilience.
As geopolitical uncertainty intensifies, Deloitte Ireland worked with the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) to help drive a national conversation around how Ireland can prepare for a more complex and unpredictable future.
As one of the world’s most globally connected economies, Ireland’s success has also made it strategically exposed. The country now hosts more than 30% of EU data, while three quarters of Northern Hemisphere subsea cables pass through or near Irish waters, connecting global markets, cloud systems and communications networks. Across sectors including technology, aviation, financial services and cybersecurity, organisations are already dealing with increasingly sophisticated cyber threats and signs of state-backed espionage activity.
That changing risk landscape sat at the heart of Secure Together: Enhancing Ireland’s Security and Resilience in a Time of Heightened Geopolitical Risk, a major white paper co-authored by Deloitte and the IIEA.
Rather than producing a traditional policy document, Deloitte brought together senior leaders from government, critical infrastructure, financial services, technology, communications and academia to examine a more urgent and practical question: how prepared is Ireland for a world where economic resilience and national security are becoming increasingly intertwined?
For Shane Mohan, partner and National Government & Public Services Leader at Deloitte Ireland, the conversation needed to move beyond ideology and towards practical resilience.
Too often national conversations on defence and security in Ireland fall into silos or the question of neutrality. But what we urgently needed was a practical conversation about how we can build national resilience.
Shane Mohan, National Government & Public Services Leader at Deloitte Ireland.
“Ireland, as a small island nation in an important geographic location, is under threat in this hybrid warfare environment. National security and defence require a joined up approach of both government and society to build resilience. If we don’t do this, it threatens not just our national security, but it could damage our economic prosperity.”
The report also highlighted the growing role the private sector can play in strengthening Ireland’s resilience. Many Irish companies already operate critical infrastructure or develop technologies with defence and dual-use applications, from AI and robotics to cybersecurity and advanced materials.
Beyond economics, the project helped push a broader national conversation into the mainstream. One centred less on abstract geopolitical debate and more on the practical realities of protecting infrastructure, businesses, supply chains and economic stability in an increasingly unpredictable world.
