Mr. Colm Doyle:

I was in Lebanon with the first Irish battalion in 1978. The Shah of Iran had been overthrown. The Iranian battalion, which was serving with UNIFIL, broke up in disarray. The officers were physically chased across the border by their soldiers. One of the features when I was every time I went into an Iranian position the first thing I saw was a big portrait of the Shah. That was taken down overnight. France sent warships into the area to evacuate the Iranian battalion because everybody was concerned that the weapons belonging to them were being abandoned. A vacuum was created in their area of operations. Each battalion has an area of operations. If there are no spare battalions, then there is a problem.