Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

Like all small countries and many large ones, we have limited air defence capability. It has been the experience of large military powers, such as the United States which spends billions of dollars on air space protection systems, that these systems do not give an absolute guarantee of security. Israel is also incurring huge expenditure on air defence but, as was shown during the recent conflict in Lebanon, the Israeli system does not provide perfect security either.

The best defence against a terrorist attack of the sort mentioned by Deputy Timmins is intelligence and information. Airport security is vital and that is where the focus of attention has been in countries which know they cannot afford a perfect air defence system along the lines of Star Wars, which was favoured by the late President Ronald Reagan in an attempt to provide an absolute defence. Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars on the research phase of that programme it was found that 100% air defence was not possible, at least in the present state of technology.

According to the intelligence available to us, the threat of a terrorist attack on Ireland, whether airborne or otherwise, is limited. The measures we are taking are related to the level of threat, assessed by people who should know. As a small country we are faced with a choice. We can try to cover every possibility in a token way or gear up to perform a limited range of tasks to a professional level. We have taken the second option, as have most small countries. Air defence systems cost enormous amounts of money and most are, thankfully, redundant because we are not in a threat situation. If I were given the required amount of money by the Department of Finance I could think of other areas of defence expenditure where it could be used with much more gain to the Defence Forces.

See this speech in context