Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South-Central, Sinn Fein)

Local bargaining seems to be the solution to a lot of things and I am not sure how far that 1% is going to stretch to fix all of those issues. It seems to me that this was allowed to get beyond the eleventh hour before it was addressed. This is in the context of people talking about the need to take issues around defence seriously, yet it was allowed to escalate to the position of the national airfield functioning nine to five, and struggling to do so, as far as I understand.

At what stage does the Minister believe full cover will be restored such that aircraft will be able to land outside the hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.? There is a potential issue in the medium run with regard to the EU Presidency and the need for defence cover for Heads of State arriving here and so on. Has the Minister any concerns regarding the implications of this for helicopter emergency medical service support, particularly on the west coast and Shannon?

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