Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I note Deputy Costello's comments about the initial investigation and I do not wish to comment one way or another on it. According to information received by me, there have been six large scale searches and a number of more localised searches. The information received by us indicates that there has been no deficiency in the follow-up searches and that the local authorities are doing everything they can.

While I share Deputy Costello's sentiments, the question remains as to whether we can unilaterally deploy Irish troops in this search. I recall a case in the past few months in my own constituency where a young man went missing. He was missing for some time, people feared the worst and the gardaí failed to find him, despite their best efforts. His mother came to me in a state of considerable anguish and asked me to bring in the Army. When I spoke to the local officer commanding in Sarsfield Barracks, he told me that while representations had been made to him because some of the young man's relatives were in the Army, he could do nothing because he had received no request for help from the local police. Even in this country, the Army cannot intervene in such circumstances without being requested to do so by the civil authorities.

We are talking about a foreign country — Bosnia-Herzegovina. At least in the initial stages, the task of searching for this woman is exclusively a matter for the local civil authorities. If they were to make any request to me to deploy some of the Irish troops on their soil or in nearby Kosovo, I would look at it sympathetically. However, in the absence of such a request, I am not entitled unilaterally to deploy Irish troops.

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