Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Would Mr. Quinn check it out? If it is not, it would be good to circulate it here to see Mr. Quinn's rationale as to why he arrived at that decision.

I refer to chapter 8, paragraphs 12 and 13, which trouble me a little bit. Mr. Quinn spoke about having spare equipment in stock for all contingencies and how it is the job of the Army to always be vigilant, plan ahead and plan for unforeseen circumstances. The essence of paragraphs 12 and 13 is that the Department, and Mr. Quinn, as the Accounting Officer, were of the view that it would have been highly speculative to produce contingency cost projection that may arise for unidentified or unforeseen problems. Even the boy scouts have a motto, bí ullamh, be ready. Mr. Quinn is saying that the Defence Forces were not preparing for unidentified, unforeseen problems. What kind of an Army would we have if it was not planning for unforeseen developments? The Department should always have a note in the event of problems. That jet could have crashed anywhere in the last 22 years. There should have been a note on the options to consider but Mr. Quinn is saying that there was no point. The essence of that is there is no point in speculating or drawing up a contingency plan for an event that we are not sure might ever happen. The essence of the Defence Forces is to be ready and prepared. A crash or anything could have happened.

I understand that when the issue arose you had to make the best fist of it but not enough advance planning had been done. The Department was caught on the hop when it happened. It was always a possibility that some fine day the aircraft would run into a problem. The Department seemed to have zero contingency planning in place. I am speaking about the lack of a contingency plan. To put it simply, if the current aircraft, the Learjet, ran into a problem tomorrow morning I would hope Mr. Quinn had a contingency plan in place and would not be stating that the Department did not get into providing contingencies for unforeseen problems. It is the Department's job to do that. Do you take the point? Have you a plan in place if something happened to the Learjet tomorrow?