Sabotage of electricity connectors or gas pipelines to Ireland or of a planned floating gas reserve could have “crippling” costs due to the “austere” state of Irish maritime military assets, a security expert has warned.<\/p>\n
Brendan Flynn of University of Galway said that while such sabotage attacks might “seem implausible”\u00a0 to Irish people, they could form part of a “crude” strategy to deter European proposals against Russia.<\/p>\n
Writing in the Defence Forces Review 2025, Mr Flynn said Ireland needs military assets \u2014 sensors, drones, naval patrol ships, and patrol aircraft \u2014 and clear and coordinated leadership.<\/p>\n
The review is published by the Defence Forces in collaboration with Dublin City University.<\/p>\n
Mr Flynn said that in contrast to sabotage of sub sea internet cables that “far greater losses” would arise if sub-sea gas and electricity connector pipelines were sabotaged.<\/p>\n
There are two electricity connectors between Ireland and Wales and a third due next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are two gas pipelines from Scotland to Ireland that provide almost 80% of Ireland\u2019s gas supplies.<\/p>\n
In addition, Mr Flynn said that liquified natural gas is increasingly stored in “large and vulnerable” floating storage regasification units (FSRU).<\/p>\n
The politics lecturer said Ireland has plans for a unit near Tarbert, Co Limerick.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said they can be easily targeted: “A hybrid attack of these assets may seem implausible to us, but could be rationalised as crude signalling.”<\/p>\n
He said removing sanctions is a Russian priority and that hybrid attacks in Irish-controlled waters would be a way of escalating tensions away from the main site of conflict.<\/p>\n
Mr Flynn said mavic-type drones, which are used by militaries, could destroy an FSRU, which cost, at least, over $100m (\u20ac87m).<\/p>\n
“Even a limited attack could create crippling costs through marine insurance markets, which are very sensitive to war risks,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said the Russian shadow fleet of oil tankers present risks: “As of mid-2025, Russian Navy warships have begun occasional “escorts” of such vessels, which poses obvious scope for an armed incident.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“A significant number [over 200] of such vessels have been documented transiting through Ireland\u2019s Exclusive Economic Zone in the first half of 2025, which poses a significant challenge for Ireland\u2019s relatively austere maritime presence and monitoring capabilities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Also writing in the review, Commandant Killian Doyle, of the Communication and Information Services, said Ireland\u2019s policy of military neutrality was “not a shield in cyberspace”.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThe 2021 ransomware attack on Ireland\u2019s HSE had strategic impact; paralysing hospitals, exposing data, and demanding a national and international response.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“These complexities highlight the ongoing uncertainty surrounding attribution, whether the assault was state-orchestrated, criminal, or any combination thereof, and serve as a salient reminder that Ireland\u2019s cyber exposure is real, growing, and far beyond the reach of passive neutrality.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabotage of electricity connectors or gas pipelines to Ireland or of a planned floating gas reserve could have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13308,8858,61,60,43,3589],"class_list":["post-149237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-defence-forces","tag-energy-prices","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}