Mr. Rossa Mulcahy:

I will start on the radar project and, as the Secretary General said there, it will be a hugely significant project for the Defence Forces, the Air Corps and air force of the future but for Ireland as well. It will allow us to see, as people in this committee know all too well, what is happening in our airspace. Every civilian aircraft is required to use a transponder but there are other actors operating in our sovereign airspace who do not always have their transponders on. As a sovereign nation, it would be fantastic when that capability is operational. As the Secretary General said, it is hoped we will see the initial delivery of that equipment starting in 2026 and building out to 2028.

We talk about radar but it comprises a myriad of systems. It is the physical equipment and the sensors themselves, the people who operate them, the headquarters facility they will operate from and, most importantly, the infrastructure that is in place to allow us to monitor and respond to those. In the future, it will also include an enabling ground-based air defence system. This will allow us, if there are actors operating in our airspace, to have some form of deterrence there as well. That is part of our level of ambition that is coming in the future. That is the radar project itself.

The Deputy mentioned the fixed-wing aircraft and the SAR contract. It is my understanding that those helicopters and that aircraft will not be operating out of Baldonnel. The only fixed-wing aircraft that will operate out of Baldonnel will be the new GASU fixed-wing aircraft that An Garda Síochána will procure. That is a twin-engine Otter aircraft, and as the GOC alluded to himself, that will be operated by Defence Forces personnel but we will not be operating any coastguard fixed-wing aircraft out of Baldonnel.