Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

At a meeting of Defence Ministers in Brussels last Monday week I pleaded with my colleagues to put the key enablers in place. We have less than 1% of the population of Europe but we are supplying approximately 12% of the troops for this mission. Someone asked me why we are not supplying air assets. We would gladly supply them if we had them, but the air assets we have do not have the range or capacity to be any good in Chad. That is the simple truth. I accept Deputy Deenihan's point about acquiring strategic airlift capacity. This is something that will be considered in the context of the next White Paper, although a cost-benefit analysis will have to be done first.

Recently, at a Defence Ministers' meeting in Brussels, we approved the Progress Catalogue 2007, which set a headline goal for the EU of being able to put 90,000 troops in the field within three months, sustainable for up to 12 months, with the appropriate backup and logistics. We are supposed to be able to do this and we have passed the appropriate resolutions to give ourselves the power and right to do that by 2010. Here, we are putting fewer than 4,000 troops into a classic peacekeeping operation. If we cannot do that in 2007, I am certain we will not be able to meet the aspiration of 90,000 troops within three months by 2010.

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