“We either take this matter seriously or we are going to continue witnessing our waters and territorial areas being treated like a playground for piracy.” So says West Cork Dáil Deputy and Leader of the Independent Ireland political grouping, Michael Collins, following yet another Russian spyship transitting the Irish EEZ sea area and refusing to respond to the Irish Naval vessel monitoring it, LÉ Samuel Beckett. The Russian ship, Viktor Leonov, was understood to be heading for Havana, Cuba. It is in maritime circles as a spying vessel.
LÉ Samuel Beckett, along with an Air Corps maritime surveillance aircraft, shadowed the Russians as they sailed through Ireland’s EEZ. Attempts were made to communicate with the Russians to establish their purpose for being in the area but, ignoring maritime courtesy and practice, the Viktor Leonov did not respond. It is part of the Vishnya class of intelligence-gathering ships and has previously been detected off the United States East Coast.
Russia has a number of these vessels which can gather intelligence through intercepting communications. Last November, another Russian spy ship, the Yantar, was found near subsea cables in the Irish Sea. It had a crew of 60 and previously declared itself as a Russian navy oceanographic research vessel. It moved away when challenged.
Monitoring of Russian vessels off Ireland is limited because of Naval Service manning problems, but Ireland is set to become a member of an alliance of European nations that shares intelligence on potential threats in EU waters. Tánaiste and Minister for Defence Simon Harris has given the Defence Forces approval to formally join the Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) to boost the country’s maritime surveillance.The CISE is a voluntary, decentralised network for sharing maritime surveillance information among EU and EEA countries and agencies. It can enable different authorities including Coast Guards, Naval Services and Customs to communicate their data securely and in real time.
Leader of Independent Ireland Michael Collins has said the time has come to dramatically increase “the level of ambition being exhibited by the State with respect to ability to counter ongoing threats to Ireland’s maritime security. Forget John West-the Irish seas have more in common with the Wild West. It is time for a National Maritime Security Agency to counter threats to sovereignty and safety- Ireland’s inability to successfully monitor and counter drug smuggling at the scale required, to verify intelligence gathering activity on foreign vessels and inability to push back forcefully against vast amounts of illegal fishing in our maritime territories is an open secret on the international stage.
“Ireland has a major role in terms of the global undersea cable network connecting Europe to North America and yet despite this fact and that we have over 20 major undersea cables landing on Irish shores we have absolutely nothing in terms of proposals for a Maritime Security Agency. I am aware that a maritime security unit was established in the Department of Defence last year to assess threats and risks to Ireland, but astonishingly we still have nothing by way of a National Maritime Security Strategy, nor do we have a deadline for when we will have sight of it. Given the existential importance of the undersea cable network we really need to be thinking at a much larger scale beyond that of outsourcing the complexity and scale of these issues to a mere unit within one Department. At the very least we need to examine the possibility of establishing a dedicated statutory agency capable of co-ordinating and developing policy and action across departments including justice, defence and the marine. It is not just a cable or security issue only.
“I have repeatedly highlighted incidents of foreign ships threatening to ram Irish vessels including the disturbing incident in 2021 when a Castletownbere fishing trawler, the Lours De Mers, escaped a ramming attempt by a Spanish trawler, three times its size. Since then, the problem of our waters being aggressively depleted by illegal fishing has remained constant.”
