Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I agree with the Deputy's comment about the terrain in Chad. It is certainly the roughest I have ever seen. It was a wonderful operation to have transported all the equipment and the camp set up so quickly in such a remote part of the world.

Regarding air support and logistical backup, the position is that we knew in advance what the operation commander's advice was and also that of our own military personnel. We needed a certain amount of air support to declare initial operational capability. We also envisaged that we would need some extra support as time passed.

The Deputy and the House will be aware that we had great difficulty in mustering the requisite air support. As Members can see from the figures I gave, the French are doing quite a lot. It was not only the French from whom we requested air support. This is an EU-led mission and all member states were contacted. Unfortunately, as Members can judge, assistance from most of the bigger countries was not forthcoming. I listened to a considerable number of lectures recently during the Lisbon referendum campaign about the European Union becoming too militarised. It took us almost 12 months to find a mere 3,700 troops with the requisite backup to save people's lives in Chad. That certainly does not suggest a militarised European Union to me.

We are hiring helicopters, which is not unprecedented in the case of a peace mission, although it is unusual. We had hoped our fellow EU countries would come up to the mark. We knew we had to get those helicopters and had hoped it would not be necessary to hire them on the open market. However, we were prepared to do so, if required. Other countries did not step up to the mark, which is why we had to hire the aircraft.

As Deputies can see, the theatre of operations is very big. Nevertheless, we know where the refugee camps are and where the internally displaced people are located. When we have the four extra utility helicopters, we will have plenty of air support.

See this speech in context