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

The answer is "Yes." If I am the Minister for Defence in a few weeks' time after the election, I intend to put it to the Government that we should send a vessel to the Mediterranean for another rotation. The vessels were on eight or nine-week rotations last year. To be honest, when we decided last May to send a ship, it raised many eyebrows. People wondered whether we had the capacity to do it. The Naval Service was given three weeks in which to prepare the LE Eithneto go to the Mediterranean. During the three rotations, the three ships did a phenomenal job and rescued more than 8,600 people, many of whom would not be alive today were it not for the Naval Service, supported by the Defence Forces as a whole.

As the Minister for Defence, I am proud of the professionalism and compassion of our Defence Forces, be they on peacekeeping missions in Lebanon, Golan or elsewhere. However, last year was a real test for the Naval Service in particular, which had never before been asked to perform a mission that was anything like as complex as this one. Not only did the service perform extraordinarily well, but there is a strong demand for it to return. I expect that we will do so. Obviously, there are knock-on consequences in terms of managing patrolling hours and so on in our own jurisdiction.

I anticipate that, following the election, one of the first decisions of the new Government will be to send one of the Irish vessels back to the Mediterranean to pick up where they left off in December, working on a bilateral basis with Italy.

See this speech in context