Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back, albeit on the other side of the fence in this case. It is a very interesting petition that called on us to visit Shannon Airport. The petitioners appeared before us and the Minister of Transport, Tourism and Sport also appeared before us to discuss the different elements of this. We seem to be focusing on neutrality, which is the major question. A number of issues were initially raised by the petitioner. The petition asked to investigate the fact that we are allowing aircraft that carry military personnel and hardware, albeit sometimes in the hold of the aircraft, to land in Irish airports. This points to the question around neutrality and goes back to the old adage if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck despite the fact that the Government says that our neutrality is not affected. The petition argues that if one asked an independent observer from outside to look at the fact that we are allowing military aircraft to land in a civilian airport like Shannon, they would decide that it makes us complicit in whatever actions are being undertaken by those armies or the troops travelling through the airport.

The Minister said that there is a difference between political neutrality and military neutrality. Could he tell us the legal definition of neutrality this Government stands by? Neutrality is a word that is bandied around quite a lot on these types of issues so we need to be very specific because the nub of the issue is what the Government regards as neutrality. Where is it defined in international law? Are we bound by international treaties in respect of that definition? I believe the Government said previously that we basically depend on the word of those Governments that the planes that are landing are doing what is said on the tin and that if they say there are no arms on board, we take their word for that. The petitioner raised the question as to how we would ever know that if we never board those aircraft and never check this out. One could argue that if I was stopped at a road traffic checkpoint and somebody asked me whether I had contraband or drugs in my car, the Garda certainly would not take my word for it if I said I did not have anything. There would be a check of some sort. What is the basis in international law for not checking these planes when they come to Shannon?