Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is not how it works. It has to apply to Ireland if it has an emergency reason to enter our airspace. Notification procedures relating occasions on when that happens are in place.

The question about non-lethal support for Ukraine is fair. The programme for Government is clear. We had significant involvement in finalising the wording of the European peace facility so that every country could contribute to it, even countries that were not comfortable with supplying lethal weapons. The European peace facility was not designed for a full-scale war like we see in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was designed for peacekeeping missions, interventions, post-conflict management situations and so on, where funding for armaments may be necessary to ensure that police forces and so on have the equipment that they need to be able to maintain stability and so on. Ireland and a number of other European countries have always had a principled issue with funding arms. When we put the programme for Government together, the three Government parties agreed that we would fully support the European Peace Facility but that we would confine our contribution to the non-lethal support part of that facility. We make the same contribution as France, Germany, Spain, Sweden or Poland in percentage terms, on the basis of our allocation key, which is 2%. For every €500 million committed, €11 million is from Ireland.

We have confined our money to being used for the non-lethal weapon element of support. That is important too. It includes body armour, helmets, fuel, medical supplies, food parcels and all the things that sustain a military in a wartime or conflict situation, but it does not include weapons or ammunition. That is where Irish money is going. In truth, we do not have many weapons to share. If we were funding lethal weapons, we would effectively be paying for others to provide weapons. We decided, in a way consistent with the agreement in the programme for Government, to fund the European Peace Facility but not the weapons.