The Minister for Defence denied the Airbus company was "wining and dining" to win the contract for the new Government jet.
Mr Smith was replying to Mr John Gormley (Green Party, Dublin South-East) who criticised the Government's decision to replace the existing jet.
"Does the Minister agree that at a time when we are witnessing hospital bed closures, and people are being treated in rooms that normally store dead bodies, this represents a scandalous misuse of taxpayers' money?
He claimed that the Gulfstream IV would under normal circumstances have 13 more years of productive life, and the Government's decision was all about vanity. "We already have seen the vanity of the Government, with the Taoiseach spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on make-up," he added. "Even the Queen of England travels in the first-class section of a commercial aircraft on occasion. Why can this Government not do the same," he asked.
"Is it true that representatives from Airbus are currently in town, wining and dining the Government with the aim of winning this contract?"
Mr Smith replied: "Nobody is wining and dining the Government. The business of the procurement will be done under the tightest of scrutiny and in the safest way I can achieve for the benefit of the people." Mr Smith said that in 1991, "when this country faced horrendous unemployment problems, when the health service contained only a fraction of the number of people who currently work there, a forward-looking Government acquired the Gulfstream IV for ministerial transport."
He added that it had paid for itself over and over by providing a flexible facility to do the kind of business that was done by forward-looking governments in the interests of the people they represented.
"The deputy will be quite surprised, when this process is over, to see that despite all the craw-thumping and pretending, the acquisition of this aircraft will not in any way have affected the provision of our health services, into which we have put considerable additional funds and staff," he added.
Pressed further by Mr Gormley, the Minister said that people interested in selling aircraft might come to Dublin to meet people. "I have not met, nor will I be meeting, anybody in this connection," he added.
