Air Corps safety `of highest order'

The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, has said he had received an assurance that safety standards and procedures in the Air Corps were "of the highest order".

Mr Smith called Defence Forces chiefs and his Department secretary-general to a meeting earlier this week over safety standards in the Air Corps.

Speaking in Renmore Barracks, Galway, yesterday, where he presented a Defence Forces Military Star to the family of Pte Billy Kedian, who was killed in Lebanon in May of last year, the Minister said that at the meeting he had received the assurance from the General Officer Commanding the Air Corps, Brig Patrick Cranfield.

Mr Smith held the special meeting on Monday in response to an internal Air Corps report which identified sub-standard crash-rescue services at military airfields, including Baldonnel in Co Dublin, Gormanston, Co Meath, Finner, Co Donegal, and Monaghan.

He said he had no knowledge of the report, prepared last April, and that he received a copy of it on Monday after a leaked version was published in a newspaper last weekend. The findings come just after the Air Accident Investigation Unit's recent highly critical report on the circumstances surrounding the Dauphin helicopter accident at Tramore.