Senator seeks court order to reveal any secret RAF protection deal

Hijacked planes are not an issue since 9/11. The problem is the Russians fly snooping flights in Irish airspace without telling Irish airtraffric control who they are and causing huge problems for all commericial flights using Irish airspace. From what I understand, the IAA contact the RAF to check out the airline. From what I recall, there was a bit of a to-do a while back about the RAF straying into Irish airspace without permission/request.

As far as I know, the problem isn't having airforce jets, but a huge investment is needed in the air traffic control system which seems to be very antiquated.

All fair points but ultimately the electorate and the people of Ireland are to blame as much if not more than the Humphrey Appleby types, or whatever the Irish equivalent is.

The fantasy of neutrality or non-alignment is and always has been a nonsense. If we want to be a grown-up country, we invest in defence, simple as.

It's been known about to anyone with a functioning brain, a bit of commonsense and who takes the virtual signalling 'holier than thou' 'we are neutral' Koolaid from the likes of our current and most previous presidents, the Irish Times and so on, with a soupcon of salt.

Where Mr Craughwell has a legitimate point is in requesting that the arrangements be made formal and subjected to democratic oversight - he's right on this - but his dalliances with Qatar don't look good.

So you've no source and you basically just made that up. Might be your logic but it is perfectly possible for the governments to have an agreement not to shoot down an airliner over Ireland and then for the RAF to go and break it on the order of a British PM. As you said yourself they wont care less but the senior civil servants in the DoD and DFA might be relying on a piece of paper which is worthless in the event of an emergency. If they are then they have failed Ireland when it comes to national security.

Agree with this, we should be looking after our own air defenses instead of relying on the RAF. Though I wouldnt blame the electorate when it is never an election issue to begin with. It is a perfectly reasonable position for a neutral country to protect its airspace from attack just as Finland does. What is needed (and has been missing) is leadership from the politicians themselves to get it done. If they are confusing neutrality with defending ourselves then more fool them, its not about neutrality at all.

A plane could be hijacked and crashed into google hq in town so lets join nato. 😆

The whole point is that we dont know what is in this agreement with the UK govt. All we know is that the Irish govt. of the day outsourced the air defense of our country to the UK. In the event of an attack intended for the UK their national interest and our national interest do not fully align yet we are the ones who have handed them the keys to our airspace. Their Ministry of Defence is over the moon that we have given them a free buffer zone all the way from the Atlantic to the UK, it should be no wonder they want to do this as it makes the UK more safe while simultaneously making us less safe. It would be like Finland outsourcing their entire air defence to Russia, the Finns arent that stupid so they invested heavily in their own air defences.

If the RAF need to shoot down a plane to protect the UK at the expense of Irish civilian deaths that is what they will do regardless of what document or agreement the Dept of Foreign Affairs and Dept of Defence have in their possession. They will not put UK lives at risk but will be perfectly happy to do so with Irish lives should a British PM give the order. You can see the aftermath of it already, "sorry about that Paddy old chum". If this happened and Irish people died there would be national uproar and rightfully so because it would have exposed the dereliction of duty of our govt. to protect the nation

This has all come about becasue generations of politicians and senior civil servants were being cheapo Charlies and refused to do what every other nation state does and fund the defence of their country. Instead they are preferring to act like immature children and thinking themselves as clever by getting the RAF to do it. That kind of thinking has serious potential to blow up in their faces and would likely happen at the cost of Irish civilian lives.

The politicians in this country need to grow up and take seriously any threats to national security. And to invest in our air defences like radar and anti aircraft batteries specifically on the west coast instead of outsourcing this responsibility to a foreign power who have different interests to us. This is what any mature nation state is doing.

Yeah thats him. He is an absolute gowl but on this topic of Irelands national defence he is absolutely right to be asking questions

Radar and air defences would be no use against a highly sophisticated enemy like Russia. Even attack aircraft would be easily overwhelmed by Russia probably destroyed on the ground before taking off.

Realistically unless you can have air superiority you don't have a hope. Even NI does not have defences.

The annual cost of such a set up would not be worth the cost. We had baby ships "at sea" with their engines turned off and anchored to save on fuel costs. Full crew.

We need to risk assess the real danger and budget an appropriate response.

The military is chronically underfunded but realistically if fully funded with air cover I would not feel much safer. We would need subs to counter russian subs.

I think what you're talking about is some sort of full scale invasion by Russia and yeah I would agree even with air defences it would be quickly overwhelmed. But Im not sure how sophisticated they are as an airforce, they havent been able to gain air superiority in Ukraine and have lost a lot of hardware out of the sky, over 200 helicopters at last count. Nonetheless Ukraine had a good starting point and had air defences in position, we are starting from the ground up with absolutely nothing.

Im more so advocating for air defences as a deterrent to any actor deciding to incur on our air space which they can currently do without any consequences whatsoever. The reason it can be done is becasue it is known the air space isnt defended adequately which is basically a green light to them or others. If a nefarious actor knows there is a surface to air system then suddenly they begin to think twice which is exactly its purpose as a deterrent.

This is what Sweden and Finland do, also small nations like ourselves. Their air forces are constantly having tit for tat with the Russians in the skies but the Russians know that if they attempt to fly over Finnish or Swedish territory they do have air defence capability to shoot them down. And under international law they are fully entitled to do it once the protocols are followed. Its that deterrent that helps keep those two nations safe.

Edit: Apologies, brain fart deleted.