Visits cost Defence €1.73m, says Shatter

THE VISITS of Queen Elizabeth and President Barack Obama cost the Department of Defence €1.73 million, according to Minister for Defence Alan Shatter.

The Minister hit out at “malcontents, criminal terrorists and thugs” whose activities made the security involved necessary.

“While the right to peaceful protest is a vital part of our democracy and is a fundamental constitutional right, it is unacceptable that the many thousands of people who would have wished to welcome Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on our streets, and to view personally the historic events that took place during last week’s visit, were largely confined to doing so on their television screens because of the threat posed by a small minority of malcontents, criminal terrorists and thugs. It would not have been necessary to mount such an intensive and expensive security operation if not for the conduct of these people.”

Mr Shatter added that it was “disturbing that despite the external threat posed by fundamentalist extremist groups, many thousands of people who attended the visit of President Obama in College Green yesterday were, for security reasons arising from the threats and actions of domestic home-grown groups of malcontents, unable to be in similar proximity to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip during the royal visit”.

He said that while security was primarily an operational matter for the Garda, the Defence Forces assisted in this role.

“The Defence Forces were also involved in the guarding of vital installations and in the provision of ceremonial duties as part of Queen Elizabeth’s state visit.”

He said the cost of the Defence Forces’ involvement was about €1.1 million for Queen Elizabeth and approximately €630,000 for President Obama. He did not expect that the department would require further funding because “there is always some element within the defence budget to anticipate visits of foreign dignitaries”.