Senator Gerard Craughwell - speech from 19 Nov 2019

Senator Wilson, Senator George Cockwell, and you have five minutes. Go raibh maith, let's go here. Look, Minister, I'm sorry for dragging you to the House this evening, but these are important issues that need public airing. My colleague, Senator Wilson, has addressed the issue of the high-level group within the Defence Forces and Department of Defence who met in 2015 and 2016. And it's my understanding that their recommendations were ignored until July of this year and indeed the assurances given by the Taoiseach in July with respect to certain delivery dates have been, all of those dates have been passed and nothing has come. Minister, in order not to take a lot of your time, I want to go through a number of questions very quickly. You say the Irish Community Wrapper's Response is going to provide cover for Roscommon at a time when the Air Corps is not available. I understand that that organisation has one helicopter, so where is the second helicopter coming from? Is it being chartered? If it is, who is paying for it and what will the cost be? Two, is it true that if pilot numbers fall by another one or two, the emergency ambulance service stationed in Athlone will not be available in March. So I'm asking you, how can you guarantee that it will be available into the future? It's my understanding that we need 10 crews to make the service last and we're down to three. Third, given the senior officers have been deployed to Athlone from Baldonnel, what assurances can you give that there is proper supervision in the home base in Baldonnel with respect to the people they leave behind when they go to Athlone to take over their flying duties? I'd like to understand as well, if you can explain to me why those senior officers who put their lives at risk carrying out emergency flights all over the country, which you have pointed out have been extremely successful, why are we not paying them the same allowance that other pilots are getting? And can you now give me an assurance that those pilots will be given the same allowances as every other pilot that flies, regardless of rank, if they're in the air they should be given their allowances? And finally, Minister, you advert to the recommissioning of pilots. It's my understanding you've recommissioned two Lieutenant-Colonels, neither of which are flying at the moment in an operational capacity. Can you tell us if they will be flying as Lieutenant-Colonels or are they administrative officers? What other pilots are in the pipeline to be recommissioned in the near future? Minister, we find ourselves in a situation where the people of Roscommon, Mayo, Sligo and various other rural parts of Ireland are really, really worried about the situation with respect to the availability of helicopters. So, Minister, there are a lot of people watching this and need to know precisely where we are with respect to all of those issues. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Senator Crockwell.