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

There is, and there needs to be, a lot of interaction between the Air Corps and the Naval Service because they work together daily on maritime surveillance. When a CASA aircraft is in the air, those on board speak to the Naval Service and there is co-ordination in Haulbowline on fisheries protection observation. I do not know if Deputy Clarke has had a chance to visit the fisheries surveillance centre in the naval base in Haulbowline, but it is pretty impressive. The Air Corps and the Naval Service work in tandem on a daily basis in the context of the work they are doing.

We also have a plan to ensure the Army Ranger Wing is expanded in the context of the commission report. In the future, it will have training facilities in both the naval base and in Baldonnel. If I get recommendations from the Defence Forces that we should do more in the area of training interoperability or combined sites for training and so on, of course we will look at those. At the moment, the partnership and co-operation between those two arms of the Defence Forces - the Naval Service and the Air Corps - is working well.

See this speech in context