The Department of Defence has rejected a Sinn Féin suggestion that new aircraft ordered by the Government last week were chosen because they could operate with NATO forces.
The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, announced on Thursday last that a €60 million contract had been signed for eight Pilatus PC-9M military aircraft for the Air Corps. The plane is recommended on the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency list and can be used either for training or "light attack".
Sinn Féin's international affairs spokesman Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh has called on Mr Smith to "come clean on whether this contract is in fact part of a NATO standardisation effort". He said Slovenia had recently purchased such aircraft "in order to bring it into line with NATO standard, in support of its bid for NATO membership".
However, a Department of Defence spokesman rejected the claim. "The only role this would have is a training role," the spokesman said. "This is a propellor plane which wouldn't even catch a commercial airliner. It is very lightly armed and would be of no value to NATO, the Partnership for Peace or any mission abroad." He said it would be used mainly to train Air Corps pilots. "I can see how they might make that point if we had bought jets, but I'm sure a lot of planes are approved by NATO," he said.
Mr Ó Snodaigh also criticised Thursday's comments by Mr Smith that there was "no such thing as . . . complete military neutrality". He said the two Nice referendums had shown that the Irish people valued neutrality. "If the Government intends to change this policy, in the interest of accountability and transparency they must put their case to the people, not shift their policy incrementally and by stealth," he said.