Coveney claims to have previously been hacked.

Because he gets under their skin. Why? Because he's more in tune with his brief than any of them.

Give me a name of who replaces him.

It's not complete. That's the problem. As you are about to find out in 4 weeks time.

Give me a name as to who you would replace Coveney with.

Why would you do the British governments bidding in getting rid of him?

Simple question. Why are you doing their bidding? This is what they want.

If pathetic attempts at false equivalence is all you've got i dont know why you're bothering trying to defend this. For clarity nobody I know personally is the actual Minister for Defence and Foreign Affairs with actual responsibility for national security.

If Coveney compromised Irelands national security by not reporting a hack on his phone to the Special Branch then he is not competent to serve as Minister for Defence or Foreign Affairs.

Do you not see by Coveney resigning it gives the Brits what they want?

He has decided our policy. He humiliates them on tv in Britain. Day and night he does the hard work.

And because we are Irish and a text message may have gone wrong we get rid of that....for what? What is the upside?

You mention McEntee - this is the minister for Justice while our capital city is over run with scumbags who do what they like when they like?

This is the person to take on the portfolio?

I'm telling you they want him gone and you are doing their bidding.

You are doing what they want.

I guarantee I am not wrong.

You’re right, it’s not that big a deal, cronyism and some stupid lies but Coveney is the best Politician to deal with the Brits and I don’t like FG one bit btw, but I recognise a good politician when I see one. We would be shooting ourselves to get rid of him at a time like this.

It wouldn't matter if he was the second coming of Michael Collins, if he breached protocol as the Minister for Defence and is quite plainly lying to our faces, then he needs to go. Simple as. Not firing him (or even letting him step down) is yet another spit in the face of the Irish people from their Government. I also believe that all official correspondence (which is what this is) should be done via official channels, email, etc. Not text messages or WhatsApp (a very "secure" platform...) or anything like it. There should be no off the table hush hush conversations.

As for who to replace him? Doesn't matter, none of them actually care about us anyway so let the next gobshyte on to pretend to care. Christ, as a Garda, if I was having work related conversations via WhatsApp I'd be rightly pulled up on it because, well, AGS have a history of idiots using WhatsApp, and it's rightly a breach of GDPR (work related sensitive information via an unsecured messaging platform which is owned by one of the largest companies in the world with a history of selling confidential information unbeknownst to the owners).

A Minister for Defence with no cop on to Cyber Security... Nearly only in Ireland...

Why would the Brits want Coveney gone if they have his phone hacked and he is conducting government business by text? Thats a pretty nice flow of information for them. If it is the case then Coveney and his blase attitute to his phone being hacked is an intelligence asset for the British.

You are quite right, it has changed its terms of use, thanks for reminding me and Signal seems to be the most secure out there now and open source too.

If the British have Coveney's phone hacked they probably have Martin's hacked too. And they'll hack phones until kingdom come unless we get to the bottom of this.

You are make a lovely plaintive case for Coveney but ultimately it is a self defeating one for Ireland.

Nobody is bigger than the state. Phil Hogan thought he was too.

And mentioning Phil, I would imagine the EU would take a dim view if we allowed the British to hack phones and did nothing.

We need answers and if that destroys Coveney or Varadkar or whoever, so be it.

Where did he say his 'government' phone was hacked and where did he was that he was hacked when he was a minister, and where did he say what the nature of the hack was?

People need to relax and stop reading into things that were not said.