Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Labour Party accepts that it is important for the Naval Service to have the same opportunity to have overseas experience as the Army has enjoyed for a very long time. However, I have a couple of concerns about this particular motion. I would ask the Tánaiste to address some of them. Obviously, one of these relates to the capacity of the Naval Service to deploy one of our four seagoing vessels that are operational at this moment and its personnel to the Mediterranean. We have, as the Tánaiste will be aware, six ships, the LÉ Róisínand LÉ Niamh, which are large patrol vessels, and four Samuel Beckett-class patrol vessels, available to us.

It is interesting that those four vessels were actually built at a time when the country was broke, but a commitment was made to ensure the Naval Service had vessels. Two more vessels are coming from New Zealand. They will not be operational until next year. They will be inshore patrol vessels. No clear decision has yet been presented to us about a replacement multipurpose vessel for the retired flagship, LÉ Eithne. At at time when we have 770 naval personnel and the minimum required is over 1,000, can the Tánaiste assure us that, with the real demands on the Naval Service to patrol our maritime exclusion zone and economic zone, which is ten times the size of our landmass, it will be capable of meeting them? As we have heard, there have been occasions since January when one vessel has been available to carry out patrols. That becomes much more focused in the context of concerns about Russian vessels looking at offshore wind facilities and communication facilities. We really need to ensure that we have the capacity to do our own business in our own territorial waters to a degree which we are clearly not able to do now. I would like to have a proper debate on that matter.

The second issue is that while the purpose of this operation, namely, to interdict the flow of arms into Libya, is important and to be lauded, the Tánaiste's commitment to the effect that it is not intended that the Naval Service will engage in capacity-building for the Libyan Coast Guard is vital. The Libyan Coast Guard has been completely discredited. I wish I had time o put some of the evidence that I have on the record, but I cannot do so in the remaining two minutes available to me. I want to quote one nurse who worked for Médecins Sans Frontières. She is from the Tánaiste's county, Cork. She said that when she was working on a boat off the Libyan coast, on one occasion she witnessed a boat in distress being pushed back by the Libyan Coast Guard. She said it was one of the worst moments of her life, that they were instructed not to approach the scene by the Libyan Coast Guard and that even though they were in their rescue gear, ready to go, they could not do anything to help. She said they had to sit back and watch survivors being transported back to Libya, which is not a place of safety, contrary to humanitarian law. She said it was hard to take and that they know people will be taken back to prison warehouses.

We need to be clear in the motion before the House that Irish Naval Service personnel will not be training members of the Libyan Coast Guard. As stated, the latter has been discredited. I would like the Tánaiste to be clear that not only is it not intended to do so, but that it is expressly prohibited under the motion for Irish Naval Service personnel to be involved in such training.

Those are my two concerns. One is the capacity of Ireland to do the job at hand, which is clearly not the case at the moment with the vessels and personnel we have, and how it will be impacted further in this regard by the deployment of a vessel to Libya. Second, if we are to do that, a clear commitment must be given that under no circumstances in the future, even if the training of the Libyan Coast Guard becomes a feature of this mission, since the latter is a secondary criterion, will Irish personnel be involved. I would welcome a clear commitment to the House that this is not only the Tánaiste's intention, but that there will be a clear instruction in this regard to the Naval Service personnel deployed on this mission.

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