Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome to the committee. We did not always have a great relationship over the last Dáil period but I have to put something on the record today. There was a discussion at the weekend among some friends of mine regarding an assessment of Ministers' performance in the previous Government or the current Government and the Minister came out on top as the person who achieved most of what he wanted to achieve while in power. I have to agree with that assessment. We did not always agree on things and we are probably not going to agree today but I thought I would start off with a softening blow rather than a tough one.

As the Minister knows, search and rescue has been a bugbear of mine for the past four or five years. It looks very much like the incoming contractor is going to miss the deadline. In fact, I think it has missed the deadline with effect from Monday of this week. I hope the State is not going to have to pick up the cost of that.

The other thing that has been brought to my attention is the age and model of aircraft that is to be used for top cover. Apparently, it has over 11,000 hours and is 12 years old. Aviators have told me it should be in the scrapyard, rather than undertaking a new life as top cover for Ireland. I know the Minister has a concern for the overall search-and-rescue system and has been committed to it but I am concerned about the top cover. I will never understand how we ended up getting helicopters that we were once told were unsuitable for the Irish situation, but we are where we are.

The Coast Guard is a wonderful organisation but it was dysfunctional. There has been a change and I can see from people on the ground that this change is beginning to filter through and people are, shall we say, more comfortable. The current top people in the Coast Guard have gone a long way to undo some of the harm that has been done to people locally. When we are all gone out of here, I would like the Department to engage with the Coast Guard, try to repair the bad feelings there are in certain parts of the country and try and bring people back into the fold. I realise the safety responsibility they have but the people who have been pushed out were all highly safety-conscious people. I would like to see that happen and I hope the Minister will endorse it.

I have one other question for the Minister regarding metro north. We had representatives of Iarnród Éireann in here some time ago and I asked them how long it would take to take a spur from Swords into Dublin Airport. They said it would take one year of planning and one year of building, which would give us access to Dublin Airport by rail from the city centre. What is the Minister's feeling on that?