Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Cabinet has now approved the deployment of an Irish naval vessel to the Irini overseas deployment mission. The proposal must be approved by the Dáil, hence the requirement for today's motion. The Government's decision, subject to Dáil approval, is to approve the deployment of a Naval Service vessel to Operation Irini in June and July. Defence Forces management has welcomed news of the mission, with a recent statement from it indicating the ship would deploy in June and July. The LÉ William Butler Yeatshas been identified as the naval asset set to deploy for this operation.

The crew has already undergone a period of work in order to be mission ready as such. What I cannot understand is that we do much talking about what we are going to do but recently there were two Russian cargo vessels off our coast and we could do absolutely nothing only stand idly by and wave out at them. They were sending a threat. They were continuously moving up and down off our coast. At one stage, they were 30 nautical miles off County Kerry. It is unbelievable to think that we are not set up to monitor this and to ensure the safety of our people and the equipment that is out there. There is a communication cable between Ireland and Europe and Ireland and the US and that is why they continue to monitor and trawl up and down outside that area, which they have no right to do. I do not think we have had any explanation as yet as to why two Russian ships carried out this work. We seem to be picking up intelligence from elsewhere. That is the only way we have to find out how we monitor these things. Our Defence Forces are unable to do that. We are being told that we are unable to send a naval ship because of the current problems in Haulbowline in Cork in terms of crewing shortages. That is an astonishing situation in which we find ourselves. While we want to go across the world to help others, we certainly have not looked after our own. Apparently we do not have sonar capability on our own vessels. That only happened a few weeks ago. It was not months or years ago. Many media personnel have contacted me; I do not know why. I suppose I often speak about it. We had the Russians off the coastline of Ireland some time ago and the fishermen sorted that problem out. We need answers to these questions, however.

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