FINE GAEL TD Fergus O’Dowd says he will be seeking a review of the State’s €500 million contract for search-and-rescue helicopters if his party is elected to government.
The party education spokesman and former transport spokesman said he was concerned about the cost of the contract and had raised this with former minister for transport Noel Dempsey and officials before it was signed last year.
He also said there appeared to be “significant questions to answer” in the light of recent developments in Britain involving Soteria, the consortium which secured the Irish contract.
Last week, Britain’s secretary of state for transport, Philip Hammond, halted a £6 billion (€7 billion) privatisation of the search- and-rescue helicopter services there. Mr Hammond said Soteria – the consortium which won the contract to replace more than 40 helicopters run by the British military and maritime and coast guard agency with new Sikorsky aircraft – had informed the government of “irregularities” in the conduct of its bid team.
Mr Hammond said the irregularities included access by one of the consortium members, CHC Helicopters, to commercially sensitive data relating to bids. British military police have been investigating how the information came to be in the possession of the company.
CHC Ireland said last week that the British situation would not affect the new contract which it concluded as part of Soteria with Mr Dempsey last July.
The contract will involve replacing ageing Sikorsky S-61 helicopters flown by CHC for the Irish Coast Guard with one new and four second-hand Sikorsky S-92 helicopters.
The used Sikorsky S-92s are in Scotland and the transfer to Ireland was tied into the British privatisation contract with Soteria.
The Department of Transport said it had been told by CHC that it remained “committed” to delivery of the S-92 aircraft for “search and rescue in Ireland by 2013”. A new S-92A due for delivery to Shannon in December this year is being built in the US, it said.
Documentation obtained by Mr O’Dowd under the Freedom of Information Act indicates that there were two principal contenders for the new contract – CHC and Bristows – and that consultants Consultavia Ltd advised that a number of companies be invited to tender.
It is understood that seven companies issued expressions of interest and were given tender documents. The Chief State’s Solicitor’s Office was represented on the Government’s negotiating group.
The documentation shows that the Department of Defence ruled the Air Corps out as a contender at a future helicopter study group meeting in July 2008, as its AW139 helicopters were not equipped for search and rescue and it had “no aspirations” towards a national role in this area.
The Air Corps was withdrawn from search and rescue by former minister for defence Michael Smith in 2004.
Two years before that, the government cancelled a contract to buy as many as five helicopters from Sikorsky for the Air Corps when rival bidder Eurocopter took a High Court action which was subsequently settled.