Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 5 Jul 2022

Goehr maig o'tch Culli hir, look, Ciara, James, I'd like to welcome both of you to the House, great to see you here, congratulations on your election and congratulations James on your support for that election. Leader, last week we had the Air Navigation and Transport Bill and I don't want to rehash the debate but on the 29th of June the Department of Transport issued a tender seeking an aviation consultancy service in relation to the competition for the provision of Irish Coast Guards Aviation Service. Are we really going to appoint an agent to appoint our next SAR service? I've been harping on about this for two years if not more. It is absolutely diabolical to think that we are about to engage in another SAR contract where four people lost their lives because of the lack of oversight in the last contract and we are about to go to tender. I understand in contempt of the Oireachtas committee a tender has already gone out where the secondary general of the department has refused on four occasions to come to the committee to debate or to discuss the process that brought us to the point we are at. This is simply unacceptable behaviour and I'm really wondering at this stage who is the civil service answerable to? Have we a role at all in the Oireachtas or are we just here to rubber stamp whatever comes our way? It is diabolical that the Department of Transport is engaging in anything to do with aviation when they have no expertise there to support them. Now speaking on aviation as well my colleague Kyle Berry has made the point that soldiers being brought from Donegal to Dublin to assist Dublin Airport Authority should at the very least be paid €10.50 an hour for every hour they are on the road. every single hour and that means if it is a 24 hour duty then pay them on top of their salaries €10.50 an hour because what has been done here is an insult to anybody who ever wore a uniform. Dublin Airport Authority had the support of this state. This state supported businesses through Covid like no state in Europe and Dublin Airport Authority took the opportune moment to get rid of a load of people and I heard them on the radio now talking about the difficulty in recruiting people. It is absolutely unacceptable. Today we were told on Claiborne that it will take two hours for any flight coming in to recover their bags. That is if they are lucky. Two hours waiting in arrivals to get a bag. It is just totally unacceptable. And you know for once we have got to stand up for the government on this one. The government put the supports in place for all of these companies and Dublin Airport Authority threw it back in the face of the government and took the opportunity to get rid of the cheapest labour they have. And now they want to use the defence forces for a job. Go out and hire private security companies and see what they will charge you. But using soldiers for this kind of work is totally unacceptable. Thank you.