An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17
============================================================

Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel

Does the Leader recall the episode of "Yes Minister" when the hospital was opened? Sir Humphrey was explaining to the minister that bringing the patients into the hospital would destroy the organisation and that it was running perfectly without patients. Somebody somewhere within our Government is taking tutorials from the programmes "Yes Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister".
Yesterday, we had the delivery of the Government jet, which is welcome as it was something that was needed. However, while it was sold to us that we bought it for €54 million, the actual price was €54 million plus VAT plus any tariffs. Then, of course, it is not coming with the specification that was ordered and when it returns for its first major service, the other parts of the specification will be introduced. I understand the plane will have cost about €100 million by the time it is fully kitted out.
We are about to spend €500 million on primary radar. My colleague Senator Clonan and I agree we need primary radar in order to see things like drones in the sky, but do we need it now? The Air Corps is unable to manage Baldonnel. We had to bring in civilians last week to take on that work. If we buy this primary radar, who is going to use it? Who will be able to interpret what they see? Where will the training take place? If they see something up in the sky that should not be there, what will we do? Will we send a strongly worded letter on headed paper saying, "Please come down"?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-17