David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know. My understanding is that they did not want to have what they would call extraterritorial security services operating on their territory. We wanted to do this in a quiet way - the gardaí would not be in uniform. It would have allowed us to carry out security checks as we did in Greece and Lebanon where it works well. That would allow me to come in here and confirm that gardaí were involved in security checks that were not very intrusive. It was just to see if there were some there who should not come here because of being involved in terrorism or something else. That is what goes on. The gardaí do that and there is no issue of cherry-picking in any way. We work with the people on the ground there as happened in Greece and Lebanon. That did not arise. It would be the same process as in Greece and Lebanon which worked pretty well.