Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his recognition of the significant work which they volunteered to do. I have huge time for the personnel who have volunteered to be part of the mission. This is a new mission on a number of levels. For example, it is very much part of the UK mission in that this is the first time our medical people have slotted into a UK-managed mission. I was anxious for our Defence Forces to contribute medical, logistics and management expertise to the anti-Ebola virus efforts in West Africa. We could not afford to put a full mission together ourselves because of the cost and the resources required. The obvious way to be of assistance was to slot in with a larger country which had a big footprint on the ground. The UK has medivac capabilities, hospitals and isolation facilities. We do not have any plans to increase the number of personnel even though I think the UK would like us to send more personnel because it has been a very successful project to date and the UK is very happy with the level of training and approach of our Permanent Defence Force. We are somewhat limited in terms of overall resources and human resources, especially in the medical area. We plan to keep the number of personnel at five but there will be a rotation of personnel in May. The Deputy suggests that this problem might be over by August; the increase in the spread of Ebola virus will be over by August but there is a lot of management yet in this crisis before we will be able to say that a country like Sierra Leone is free of the virus.

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