Minister for Defence Simon Coveney has said Ireland will support France should it seek to increase the sharing of intelligence information among EU Member States.
Mr Coveney made the comments in Brussels this morning, ahead of a meeting of EU Defence Ministers which is focused on last Friday's deadly attacks in Paris.
The Minister said: "I suspect they'll [the French] be asking for more shared intelligence, so that we can actually understand who is moving where within the European Union, and certainly, from an Irish perspective, we will cooperate fully with that."
He said the benefit would be that EU security forces can then "try and build a profile of people who may be likely to be involved in the kind of atrocities we saw in Paris in the last few days".
Mr Coveney added: "Within Ireland for example, the Defence Forces has its own intelligence gathering operations; so does An Garda Síochána.
"They obviously share with each other in terms of security management at home and we share some of that information as well with other European countries."
Asked if this could lead to a limiting of the freedom of movement within the EU, he replied: "I hope we will be able to create a situation where we can allay the security concerns of countries of course like France who are coping with an extraordinary tragedy following a terrorist attack, while at the same time staying true to the ideals of the European Union and that's a big challenge," the minister said.
