When there's hardly a teenage home in the State that isn't concerned about drugs, it must be depressing to know that a drug trafficker has 20 times greater chance of travelling undetected to Europe through Irish waters. That's a Naval Service estimate, based on evidence given during the Brime drugs trial in 1994. It should be no great surprise.
This island's 2,700-mile coastline lost its unofficial "coast-watch", with the automation of lighthouses over the past decade. More than 90 per cent of this island's trade is by sea, and only a handful of 900 landing points have any form of harbour policing, let alone surveillance on and offshore.
With a fleet of eight ships to monitor Europe's second-largest maritime area, Ireland's patrol capability is the equivalent of less than two Garda cars for the whole island, according to the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers (RACO) naval committee.
One would never know this from the draft White Paper on Defence, which takes a narrow, land-based approach that all but ignores responsibilities beyond the shore. If the policy as outlined is put into effect, the margin of success for illegal import ers may very well widen. And the recommendations in the 1998 review of the two defence wings, carried out by Price Waterhouse and accepted in principle by the Government, will effectively have been shelved.
The key section of the draft White Paper is paragraph 3.3.3 of the text, which outlines the roles of the Defence Forces, and which gives priority at sea-to-fishery protection. While the authors have acknowledged in paragraph 2.3.10 that the "single most important area of externally based crime arises from drug trafficking", they state that these matters are "essentially policing issues" - for the Department of Justice.
Similarly, search and rescue is the concern of another department: Marine and Natural Resources. Small wonder that the text has angered both serving and retired Naval Service and Air Corps personnel, who believe the document is less a "vision" and more a device for saving money and passing the more expensive buck.
Strikingly, no account appears to have been taken of changes in national and international legislation, which have given the Naval Service enhanced powers at sea. Under the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, officers can now board vessels suspected of drug smuggling outside the 12-mile territorial limit. New obligations relating to pollution control make this State responsible for all incidents out to the 200-mile limit.
Last year, the fleet was involved in 11 extended Joint Task Force drug interdiction operations, along with the Garda Siochana and Customs and Excise. Last November's £15.8 million seizure of cannabis on board the British-converted trawler Posidonia off west Cork was one of the most successful.
Unlike the initial Price Waterhouse view of the Army, which provoked a row over reduction in numbers, the subsequent Price Waterhouse report on the Naval Service and Air Corps was regarded as essentially positive. The consultants accepted that both wings should retain their multi-tasking roles; and also advised against the trend to contract out certain services, such as search and rescue, on the basis that it was more cost-effective, in terms of training, personnel and equipment, to focus such resources within the military where possible.
The consultants recommended that the Air Corps be equipped with four medium-lift helicopters to replace the Dauphin helicopter fleet, which has already been acknowledged as unsuitable for the search and rescue work it is required to do. They did not buy into Naval Service demands for a 12-ship fleet, but did state that 1,144 personnel, and an additional crew for an eighth ship, were required.
The draft White Paper puts the ceiling at 1,144 for all eight vessels - a deviation from Price Waterhouse - and does not allow for anything like the £235 million cost required. It also fudges on key decisions to re-equip, while recognising the urgency of addressing the Dauphin helicopter fleet; instead, it recommends formation of yet another interdepartmental committee - to be known rather grandiosely as a "High Level Civil-Military Planning and Procurement Group".
The White Paper recommendation that an unspecified number of vessels be used for fishery protection only, with a reduced crew, is regarded as both "insulting" and "illogical" by sources close to the consultancy review procedure. "If half the fleet is restricted to fishery protection, when only 50 per cent of ships can be at sea at once anyway, this effectively means that this island's maritime area would be patrolled by two ships," the sources comment.
The Nautical Institute, representing both naval and mercantile officers, has described the draft White Paper as "an abdication of responsibility" for an environmental resource 13 times this island's land equivalent and valued at £30 billion, according to UN computations. "The draft appears to define defence as all about war and peace, when it should be about responsibility and ownership," Gary Delaney of the institute says.
The former second-in-command of the Naval Service, Capt. Peader McElhinney, describes the text as a "fantasy" that bears no relation to reality. Capt. McElhinney points out that the White Paper doesn't even refer to Ireland's Marine Designated Area, and effectively surrenders sovereignty at sea.
