Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are splitting hairs. The Minister is saying there is merit in doing this but we should not do it now. One reason for bringing forward this amendment is that we are conscious of the fact that we have a very small Air Corps. Whoever is in government in the future needs to do something about that and it will take time to address it. It seems to be a weakness in the legislation generally that the existence of the Air Corps, in so far as this schedule is concerned, is not even recognised. I take the Minister’s point about the command structures and so on but I cannot see why there would be any difficulty in making reference to that in the legislation now that we are amending it. There is an opportunity now to mention the Air Corps and, other than what I can only describe as a stubborn rejection of an Opposition amendment, I do not see any reason to say no to this.

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