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

I answered a similar question earlier. Under the current strategy which dates back to the 2000 White Paper on Defence, the role of the Air Corps is limited to surveillance and some limited defence capacity.

If there is a fast-moving military plane coming into Irish airspace, our Air Corps is not going to have significant defence capacity to deal with that. When the White Paper was put in place back in 2000, the assessed risk of that happening was deemed to be very low and therefore we could not justify the expenditure on putting together significant air defence capacity. We now have to reassess that in the context of the new White Paper.

First and foremost, we need to improve our capacity to monitor what is happening in our airspace and in international airspace for which the Irish Aviation Authority has responsibility. That is why I mentioned that we are looking in some detail at the cost and equipment that would be required to improve long range radar capacity along the west coast in particular. That is the first step. We will have an opportunity in the context of the broader White Paper to discuss what we should or should not be doing in terms of the Air Corps and its future role. It is important to be realistic. The cost of putting together a fleet of fighter jets is probably similar to all the defence spending in Ireland put together. We are unlikely to be pursuing that course of action, although we have to have an open mind. Instead, we need to look at improved surveillance so that we understand and have a detailed knowledge of what is happening in our airspace.

We do have some capacity at the moment. It should not be suggested that we have no capacity. We have radar capacity along the west coast that covers the vast majority of our air space, as it happens. If the Deputy is talking about further out to sea, 30 km to 50 km into the Atlantic and into international air space, he is talking about long-range equipment, which has a cost implication.

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