Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move:

“That Seanad Éireann: recognises that:

- Ireland’s Search and Rescue (SAR) system is derived from the Irish Government’s adherence to the following international conventions and guidance manuals:

- International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Convention, Annex 12;

- ICAO Convention, Annex 14, Volume II, Heliports;

- International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) 1974: Chapter V ‘Search and Rescue’;

- Convention on the High Seas 1958: Article 12 ‘Master to render assistance and Coastal State to establish SAR services’;

- Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (1979) ‘Provision of search and rescue services and RCC’;

- United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982): Article 98 ‘Duty to render assistance’;

- International Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (IAMSAR) Manuals Vol 1, 2 & 3;

- policy responsibility for maritime and aeronautical SAR services in Ireland rests with the Department of Climate Action, Communication Networks and Transport (DCACNT); this policy is implemented by the Irish Coast Guard (IRCG) as the maritime SAR Coordinator and by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) as the aeronautical SAR Coordinator. Land SAR is implemented by An Garda Síochána (AGS);

- DCACNT is responsible for ensuring that a National SAR Plan (NSP) is established and is fit for purpose; the National SAR Committee has been established by DCACNT as part of the NSP to monitor the performance of the Plan and report to the Minister on an annual basis, or as required on the performance of the NSP and identifying areas for improvement;

- the IRCG is required to discharge Ireland’s SAR obligations by implementing the NSP for all incidents occurring in the maritime domain, or as otherwise requested by SAR authorities in other domains; the IRCG is responsible for defining the requirements for the SAR helicopter contract and maintaining effective oversight of contractual compliance;

- the National SAR Committee (NSARC) represents the interests of both SAR service providers and beneficiaries in advising on SAR policies, plans and agreements; it will be chaired by a suitably experienced and qualified person independent of the organisations represented; the members of the Committee are drawn from the primary SAR stakeholders (IRCG, IAA and AGS), as well as representatives from supporting SAR stakeholders (SAR units and SAR service providers);

- all SAR stakeholders are expected to have in place:

- Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the relevant SAR Coordinators based on an agreed template setting out respective roles and responsibilities, services provided, availability, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and oversight arrangements;

- the NSP will be delivered on a phased basis; this will enable a managed and integrated approach to the revised SAR structures, and to the development of the necessary Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) and SLAs between SAR stakeholders, both horizontally and vertically, within the system;

believes that:

- the planning assumptions that were developed jointly by DCACNT and the IRCG in the Future Aircraft Study Group report in 2009 that influenced the design of the current helicopter SAR contract, were flawed;

- at no time during the current contract was there a necessity to surge more than 2 SAR helicopters to a rescue; a belief that such a capability was required contradicts the cited planning assumptions that unpinned the current helicopter SAR contract;

- over the course of the ongoing Helicopter SAR contract the concept of Value for Money (VFM) for the State was not realised from the manner in which the contract was structured and delivered;

- the Canadian Helicopter Company (CHC) S92 helicopters deployed to the contract were not new; the contract agreed with CHC unwisely depreciated these CHC assets over 10 years as new aircraft and not used assets;

- DCACNT does not have embedded in its permanent staff sufficient aviation corporate knowledge to construct a Helicopter SAR contract that realises full VFM to the State;

- aviation consultants contracted by DCACNT must possess optimum qualifications and operational contract experience to assist in the provision of a multi-million-euro Helicopter SAR contract;

- existing SLAs with the DOD for the provision of Fixed Wing SAR TOP COVER on an ‘as available’ basis does not guarantee the provision of the capability 24/7/365 required by IRCG:

- State risk of a loss of SAR services from industrial action by a single private contractor delivering all helicopter SAR is worrying; it must also be remembered that in 2016 the CHC Group filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection in the USA;

- to address this risk the State must urgently reintroduce sovereign helicopter SAR capability delivered by the Air Corps for the new 10-year SAR contract; additional resilience would also be provided by a mix of helicopter types provided from both a private contractor and the Air Corps; this would also mitigate any risk that might arise as a result of the grounding of a specific aircraft type for whatever reason;

- Ireland’s sovereign risk responsibility in international and national SAR obligations that rests solely on a single commercial contract must migrate to a hybrid model providing layers of resilience in a mix of sovereign and commercial service delivery protecting against industrial action which would ground aircraft;

acknowledges that:

- the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, along with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence, Simon Coveney, are both favourably disposed to the Irish Air Corps delivering part of the next Helicopter SAR contract;

- the provision of a Helicopter SAR service is a long-term tasking of the State and as such should assess the financial impact of leasing helicopters for the provision of this service in an informed manner;

- the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) can borrow money for the provision of capital assets at a more favourable interest rate than a private commercial helicopter company and that the state will pay a premium if commercial borrowing rates solely govern the next SAR contract;

- while the future Helicopter SAR contract is subject to Public Spending Code (PSC) procedure, the planning assumptions for the next contract need reviewing to ensure VFM to the taxpayer, ensuring the input of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) is strongly brought to bear on this procurement process;

- by utilising the Air Corps from Casement Aerodrome for East Coast SAR, it would reduce the overall size of the residual helicopter SAR contract to be tendered thereby opening the contract to a wider group of Helicopter SAR operators leading to a more competitive tendering process resulting in better VFM to the State;

- SAR providers can integrate into the NSP by detailed MoUs and SLAs;

and calls on the Government to:

- conduct an independent review of the quality and completeness of the required specialist professional SAR aviation expertise and operational helicopter SAR contract corporate knowledge being provided to the DCACNT;

- conduct an informed statistical analysis of the past 10 years IRCG helicopter SAR operations and nest requirements for the next Helicopter SAR contract around on facts based operational requirement rather than the historical Planning Assumptions of the now dated Future Aircraft Study Group of 2009;

- direct the Air Corps to assume responsibility for the provision of Helicopter SAR operations on the East Coast utilising their State existing and future helicopter assets;

- resource the Air Corps with the personnel and aircraft to provide Helicopter SAR on the East Coast;

- finance the future Helicopter SAR contract creatively through the NTMA leveraging the State’s ability to borrow money at far lower interest rates than a commercial entity;

- adopt, while policy is implemented by the IRCG, a whole of Government approach, when providing SAR, recognising the capabilities available in other Government Departments to aid in the provision of SAR services, specifically the Department of Defence.”

I will share time with my colleague, Senator Boyhan. The Minister of State is welcome to the House. Ireland has recently suffered blows with Covid-19 and the ransomware attack on the HSE. The exposure of vulnerabilities in healthcare provision and cyberdefence point to an absence of critical sovereign capability to mitigate against such threats.

The word "sovereignty" entered popular discourse in Ireland during the financial crash but its true meaning involves international recognition of a geographical territory, its borders and people. Ultimately, sovereignty is about having the resources to protect one’s citizens.

Search and rescue, SAR, is a vital national service that entails the rescue or recovery of people on land or at sea. The Air Corps has successfully delivered SAR since 1964 and continues to do so as a Defence Force task. The service is essential and cannot be compromised under any circumstances. Ireland must always retain a sovereign SAR capability provided by the Defence Forces Air Corps. The Air Corps is a State asset with aircraft, pilots, maintenance technicians, air traffic control and physical infrastructure in Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel.Taxpayers pay to maintain Air Corps assets and their use must be maximised. The Defence Forces are the first to be called up in a State emergency and have played a significant role in tackling both of the recent crises. Since 2004, civil SAR has been provided by a private contractor. The SAR service is staffed by civilian staff, comprising highly professional and courageous pilots and crews. I acknowledge their dedication. This contract is up for review and renewal and, while SAR is an essential service, guaranteed delivery should not preclude financial prudence or value-for-money analysis.

Recent mischievous commentary in the media by vested interests committed to continuing a fully privatised SAR service erroneously suggests that the Air Corps lacked the capacity to deliver on any part of the upcoming contract. I assure the Minister of State that current Air Corps pilot strength is at an all-time high through organic pilot entry, training in Ireland and abroad and re-entry into service of former Air Corps pilots. The Air Corps is in rude good health.

Contrary to what has been reported in the media by vested interests, there are no regulatory impediments to the Air Corps being awarded part of the new SAR contract. Air Corps flying regulations are nested in the constitutional legal order of the aviation world and fully comply with Ireland’s international obligations under the Chicago Convention of 1944. Military air regulations have due regard for civil aviation and across Europe there is a total system approach to aviation safety enabled by civil-military co-operation.

The military air regulations of the Air Corps for SAR operations fulfil this mission in line with the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, and International Maritime Organization, IMO. Every EU state is responsible for establishing its regulatory regime and ensuring effective co-ordination between the maritime and aviation sectors, having due regard to the objectives of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA.

The outsourcing of SAR for the past two decades has been a high-risk activity. We must now act wisely to mitigate this risk by ensuring that a sovereign State asset, namely, the Air Corps, is tasked with providing a portion of the ten-year SAR contract. Outsourcing all SAR delivery to an international civilian company flies in the face of having State resilience and sovereign capability in times of crisis, as we have seen with Covid and the HSE ransomware attack.

The current privatised SAR contract was listed as costing €523 million when placed in 2012. To date it has cost €640 million. By 2023, it will cost in excess of €700 million. An aviation expert from an Irish third level institution has calculated the cost of SAR being delivered by the Air Corps from 2023 for ten years at €152 million. That is east coast SAR. It would include the east coast helicopter SAR, plus the fixed-wing top cover serviced by the new CASA aircraft, which are due to be delivered soon. The saving to the Exchequer would be an estimated €389 million compared with the cost of the same service provided by a civilian contractor.

When we look back at the current contract, we can see that it was both flawed and inadequate. It betrays a lack of knowledge by the Department of an operational SAR contract, particularly the technical and operational aviation elements of it. This should never have been the case because in 2009, the Department and the Irish Coast Guard commissioned a report by the future helicopter study group on tender specification criteria for search and rescue helicopters. Of note is the report’s recommendation for night-vision goggle flying and helicopter underslung operational capability for firefighting and resupply in any future contract. Sadly, the night vision part did not find its way into the 2012 contract, instead raising its head astonishingly in 2013, one year after the contract was signed. The underslung capability was contracted for but never delivered. This contrasts with the night-vision service the Air Corps has offered to An Garda Síochána and the air ambulance service since 2008, and has provided for military operations and military SAR since then.

Incredibly, in 2013, one year after the contract with CHC Helicopter was signed, the company was contracted by the Coast Guard to deliver night-vision flying capability with its five S-92 helicopters. However, the cockpits of these helicopters were not fitted for night-vision flying.This resulted in the State paying an additional €3.5 million, plus VAT, to retrofit the helicopters that were not the property of the State for night-vision flying, further increasing the value of the CHC asset at the taxpayers' expense. Furthermore, in 2015, the State purchased night-vision goggles for CHC at a cost of €570,000, with an additional spend for pilot and crew training. I understand that, to date, the training for night-vision operations has not been completed and that it is possible that no CHC helicopter contracted by the State to the Irish Coast Guard has flown a single night-vision mission despite adding €7.5 million in additional costs to the contract. In an even more serious turn, the State agreed a financial model with CHC to allow a depreciation cost structure in respect of the five helicopters provided over the lifetime of the contract as if the helicopters were new, but four of them were not new.

CHC was contracted in 2012 to provide helicopter sling load operational, HESLO, capability to carry large water buckets on its five helicopters. During the recent wildfires at Killarney National Park, its services could not be used because its aircraft were never outfitted to perform this task. Instead, the Air Corps deployed three HESLO-capable helicopters and the State contracted a fourth from Scotland. During the incident, this had an impact on the spread of the fire. Where was the Department's and Irish Coast Guard's oversight of the compliance element of the 2012 contract?

In July 2020, the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, issued the first annual report on the national SAR plan, which was submitted by the committee chaired by Vice Admiral Sir Alan Michael Massey, a UK SAR veteran. One of the key recommendations was the urgent requirement for a SAR assurance mechanism, which involves professional external advisers ensuring compliance with best practice. In 2017, the Department and the Irish Coast Guard sought a company to carry out this role. I can inform the House that the company contracted to carry out this potentially lifesaving role of aviation assurance compliance and to provide advice to the Department of Transport on the next SAR tender was only incorporated in 2014. Its first annual accounts, which, I should say, are not subject to audit, were submitted in 2015 and, crucially, its annual accounts to 31 January 2017, the year in which it won the tendered contract to provide aviation assurance compliance, showed a potential loss of £32,000, net assets of £13,000 and cash-in-bank of £9,000, and the company had just one employee, namely, the owner. The company accounts show no significant debtor or creditor balances that would confirm ongoing trade. There is no evidence of a verifiable track record of the multiple high-value contracts that were listed in the letter I received recently from Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan.

I ask the Minister of State to explain the discrepancy between the company accounts and the list of projects that the company was said to be involved in. The taxpayer should know what distinguished this company from other companies who tendered for the contract and given the company had only one employee, what consideration was given to the possibility that this owner-director might sell the company? Was a change of control clausebuilt into the contract? What other contracts was this company involved in as evidenced by its balance sheet? Did the State effectively purchase the services of a one-man show?

On the 14 May last, I received a reply to a letter I sent to the Minister, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste raising my concerns in regard to the current and future SAR contracts and, in particular, about the company contracted in 2017 to provide aviation assurance compliance. The letter states, "The company customer base is impressive and varied and includes other EU Coast Guard, Oil and Gas companies, several wind energy companies, an air ambulance charity, various public bodies and national, EU and UN agencies" - this for a company that was just three years old. The letter continues: "The company uses technical and pilot specialists with decades of aviation experience including considerable helicopter and SAR experience." The company accounts, all of which are publicly available, show zero evidence of such diverse trading activity or the hiring of expert consultants to service these suggested contracts. We already have ample evidence to show that the 2012 contract was not subjected to the scrutiny and oversight that is necessary in respect of such a critical contract. I am very concerned now that the company contracted by the Department and the Irish Coast Guard in 2017 to advise on the next SAR contract may not have the necessary skills to do so. I am seriously worried about a repeat of the mistakes made in respect of the 2012 contract. I believe the Air Corps must be part of the new contract. The Air Corps, as a State entity, cannot formally bid on any part of this contract. It can only be tasked by the Government to do so. The Air Corps has already submitted a comprehensive proposal to the Department on why it should be granted a defined element of the helicopter contract and all of its fixed wing element. Supported by the Irish Air Line Pilots Association, IALPA, I now call on the Minister of State to make this submission publicly available. She should also publish the Department and assurance expert opinions, along with the Air Corps rebuttal of that critique. This is the only way a fair and transparent process can be seen to have taken place in the awarding of this enormous State contract.

To sum up, it would be a very smart move for Ireland to retain its sovereign capability for SAR. Ireland and the UK are the only two states in Europe that have totally outsourced SAR services to private companies. In tasking the Air Corps to operate east coast SAR from the Baldonnel base, the Department could reduce the new contract price, opening the tender to many companies. A reduced private sector involvement will drive down prices and will allow numerous aviation players to compete because of the smaller scale, which will result in a more competitive bid. In addition, the State would be sending a powerful message of support and confidence to its military. It would also reinforce the message to international contractors that they do not enjoy a monopoly service delivery and cannot effectively charge what they want. A SARs contractor assuming that the State has no alternative or sovereign competitor is dangerous and costly. It is the aviation equivalent of an international pension fund swooping in to buy an entire housing estate, the result being the State will never own the houses, or in this case the helicopters, but citizens will be paying extortionate rent or lease costs.

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council recently stated that official budgetary forecasts are poorly founded, major policy commitments are not built in and the promised medium-term strategy has not been delivered by the Government. The chair of the council also stated that the absence of well-founded medium-term plans and fiscal targets leaves the public finances unanchored. In light of this, I call on the Minister of State and her colleagues in the Government to act on the very serious issues that I have outlined in the interests of fiscal responsibility, public safety and national sovereignty. I thank the Minister of State for her time and I look forward to her reply.