Regarding the securing of land locally, I am not familiar with the individual case, but I suggest that a conversation with Cork County Council might be helpful. An extra €10 million was allocated in the budget for this community stability fund, if one can call it that. The fund provided €200,000 to the Irish Red Cross so far this year, so I would be hopeful that the organisation may be able to secure more money through the allocation of that sum. I do not know if the Deputy has raised that with the relevant Ministe…

Yes.

If I were to decide where almost €1 million goes on the basis of branches in individual parts of the country, I have no doubt that I would try to prioritise parts of Cork, but that would not be appropriate. We provide a funding package to the Irish Red Cross. Some of that funds its affiliation to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is €130,000 each year. The rest of it goes on running the activities of the Irish Red Cross here. We must work on the basis of dealing with a central body that then makes…

I just do not get what the obsession with the UK is here, as if we cannot have a bidder from the UK. The current search and rescue contract is primarily with a UK company and it has done an extraordinary job. Yes, it is very expensive for the State, but we have saved many lives as a result of it. This is primarily the responsibility of the Department of Transport. The steering committee to get this right also involves significant input from the Department of Defence and the Air Corps itself. I have no sight of like…

First, it has not been finalised yet. I assure Deputy Brady that any assessment of companies tendering to provide this service will be very robust. The process will be independent. The State will go through an appropriate process. I think the Deputy indicated earlier that we will be committing hundreds of millions of euro in this regard. Over the lifetime of the next contract the State will spend well over half a billion euro on search and rescue contracts. The process that will need to be followed will need to be …

First, we are ploughing money into the Air Corps. The Air Corps operates a fleet of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft which provide military support to the Army and Naval Service, together with support for non-military air services such as Garda air support, air ambulance, fisheries protection and, at times, ministerial air travel. Priorities for the Defence Forces, including the Air Corps, are considered in the context of the White Paper on Defence. In line with these agreed priorities, work is well advanced on …

A contract for the supply of two C-295 maritime patrol aircraft was entered into with Airbus Defence and Space in December 2019.

That is a contract that is worth approximately €221 million. The aircraft should be delivered in 2023. It takes time. The idea that we are not ploughing money into the Air Corps and that its future is in any way threatened just does not stack up. We are doing the opposite: we are building capacity.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 46, 50, 73, 78 and 83 together. As outlined already in my earlier response on the commission, the position is that establishment of an independent commission on the Defence Forces is an important commitment made in the programme for Government. The programme for Government states that the commission will be tasked with undertaking a comprehensive review, which will include the following matters: arrangements for the effective defence of the State at land, air and sea; structures for…

The commission will follow through on the commitments we have made in the programme for Government. I believe the people we are approaching to be on the commission are first class. I am very confident they will be able to do a very good job, but we need to get them approved by Government first and so on. That process is under way. I take Deputy Costello's point that we need to plan properly for a response to adaptation as well as mitigation when it comes to climate change. Part of the adaptation challenge is to put…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 49, 57 and 424 together. From my previous time in the Department of Defence when the Deputy held the purse strings, I was not alone in caring about the Naval Service as he was extremely supportive at the time. I recognise that. Coming from a coastal county, he understands why that is so important as do I. I am frustrated and concerned that we do not have the capacity to put ships to sea or as many as we should be putting to sea because we do not have enough personnel to crew them. W…

I hope many of the individuals and their families will gain solace and pride from having their names read out in Seanad Éireann in the way the Cathaoirleach has just done. It is a recognition of the stature in which they are held by the political system across all sides of the political divide in Ireland. I thank the Cathaoirleach for that. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the recognition of the Irish military service at Jadotville. As Members are aware, the siege of Jadotville occurred during the United Nation…

I thank the Cathaoirleach. This has been a really useful debate and I hope the families watching get some solace from the fact that the Seanad has decided to prioritise this debate, spend this much time discussing the matter and that the debate had so many contributors, which is not always the case. I congratulate the Senators who have made this happen through the Cathaoirleach's actions, and they include Senators Craughwell, McGahon, Wall and others, who have taken a real personal interest in the matter. Senators …

I move: "That Second Stage be taken now."

The Bill before us is essential to ensuring we are as ready as we can be for the challenges coming in just 50 days' time. The support of the House has been a hallmark of Ireland's approach to Brexit. I look forward to continuing that constructive engagement and working closely with all Members as the Bill passes through the Oireachtas. Last year, when I opened the Second Reading on the 2019 Brexit omnibus Bill I made an unusual call for a Minister in wishing that the law we were seeking to enact would sit on the sh…

I want to take this opportunity to speak to express confidence in the Tánaiste. Leo Varadkar has been a colleague of mine for many years and he is a person I have grown to know well and trust. We are here today because of a Sinn Féin attempt to continue to sow division within Government and capitalise on a mistake made by the Tánaiste. As became clear last week, Leo's motivation in bringing the National Association of General Practitioners, NAGP, into the fold on a new GP contract was well-meaning but it did take a…

I thank Senator Ó Donnghaile for giving me the opportunity to put the commitment on the record here. At this stage, we are 50 something days away from the end of the transition period so things need to start coming together in many areas, not just this area. There is an awful lot of work going on in regard to that so I will just outline how it will work. As Senator Ó Donnghaile noted, in April 2019 the Government sought to make arrangements so that the people of Northern Ireland would continue to have access to EHI…

We are putting in place a contingency plan in case the UK does not agree a resolution to this issue in a future relationship agreement with the EU. The hope and expectation is that we will be able to get a future relationship agreement that will involve the British Government signing off and agreeing on its citizens being able to access the equivalent of an EHIC-type scheme providing for reimbursement for medical costs if and when they are travelling around the EU. A future relationship agreement could happen; we w…

I thank the Deputy. As this is the first time she and I have had formal questions, I congratulate her on her appointment. I look forward to working with her. My priority as Minister for Defence is to ensure that the operational capability of the Army, Air Corps and Naval Service is maintained to the greatest extent possible so as to enable the Defence Forces to carry out their roles as assigned by Government, both at home and overseas. The acquisition of new equipment for the Defence Forces remains a clear focus fo…

It is important to be honest with people. The Air Corps is not equipped to monitor aircraft flying over the entirety of Irish airspace, nor is it tasked with that role. We have a relatively small Air Corps which does a really good job at what it is asked to do. We are not like many other countries that spend hundreds of millions or billions of euro on fighter aircraft that can monitor and defend airspace. For many years, we have chosen not to prioritise that equipment and funding. As Minister of Defence, a brief wh…