Minister considers battlegroup proposals

Ireland's possible participation in rapid-reaction EU battlegroups should be decided upon by the end of the year, Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea has said.

He had just received advice from Attorney General Rory Brady on legislative and constitutional changes which may be required and had sent a number of supplementary queries to Mr Brady, he said yesterday.

Mr O'Dea told The Irish Times that he would be in a position to bring a firm proposal on battlegroups either to Cabinet or the Cabinet sub-committee on European Affairs before Christmas.

He expected any recommendation would be ratified almost immediately. "There is the issue of, if we do decide to go in, what nations will we link up with," Mr O'Dea said.

"There is the question of joint training, how and where does that take place. There is of course the question of cost. We're in favour of this whole concept . . . that costs fall where they fall, people who incur costs pick up their own costs.

"There are the legislative aspects, the difficulties about Irish people going abroad training, people coming here possibly to train. There is the deployability problem, the triple lock, the slowness of decision making by the United Nations Security Council, those are all issues that we have to look at."

He was speaking yesterday at the Air Corps headquarters at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel, Co Dublin, at the official unveiling of two of the Air Corps' six new €6.4 million EC 135P2 helicopters.

Mr O'Dea said he was personally in favour of Ireland taking part in battlegroups. He did not believe such participation would compromise our neutrality.

"It is what I see as a very logical extension of our traditional peacekeeping role. The way the traditional peacekeeping role works is that if there's trouble in an area, if people's lives are in danger, if there's a danger of civil war etc, the United Nations decides to ask its constituent countries to send in troops to keep the peace.

"The whole reason for the development of the battlegroup concept is that that process takes three or four months. The whole idea of a battlegroup is that a relatively small force goes in to stabilise the situation.

"But almost invariably it won't be a stand alone thing, they'll be only in there for a period of 30 days, possibly 60, 90, 120 maximum, to hold the situation until UN peacekeeping troops arrive. But it's only a kind of advance party if you like."

The new EU battlegroups would see 120 Irish troops deployed into a 1,500-strong international rapid-reaction force.

It is likely that the Irish troops would be deployed in groups with personnel from other neutral countries.