Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy might listen. He is not good at listening. We communicate through social media to inform the families. It would have taken 130 phone calls and up to very late on Thursday night to do that. I want to be able to communicate the message as quickly as possible. Many media outlets picked up on that.

In response to Deputy Jack Chambers and Clare Daly, the UN was responsible for this rotation. It is a very complex part of the world. There is war in Syria and thousands of people are crossing the Syrian border into Lebanon. This leads to very complex issues and this is one of them. The fact that other Irish troops who were going to go to the UNDOF mission were landing in Lebanon raised many issues. We spoke to the Lebanese Prime Minister's department, the Minister's department and our ambassador to the UN, Geraldine Byrne Nason.

We all worked together to get it fixed. Unfortunately there was a delay.

To answer Deputy Ó Snodaigh's question on compensation these people who were delayed coming home were delayed going out by two weeks and they received the overseas allowance while they were at home. I did not stop that. They were given a commitment that we would pay their overseas allowance from the very start. We did that even though they were not deployed on a mission overseas.

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