Irish Taxpayers Pay €10M for Costs of Foreign Military Overflights

national | anti-war / imperialism | press release Friday May 13, 2005 15:22 by caf - Labour

Irish taxpayers continue to foot the bill for U.S. military flights using Irish airspace and for landing at Shannon

The Labour Party Spokesperson on Transport, Deputy Roisin Shortall, has called for a review of the arrangement whereby the Department of Transport pays flight charges in respect foreign military aircraft passing through Irish controlled airspace. Deputy Shortall said that new figures she had obtained in reply to a parliamentary question to the Minister for Transport revealed that these charges had amounted to almost €10m over the past five years.

“The question of military aircraft using Irish airspace has always been a subject of controversy, but I believe that the public will be shocked and surprised to find that the Irish taxpayer is actually paying for the ‘privilege’ of allowing these aircraft to fly though Irish airspace. In my question I asked the Minister for a breakdown of the nationality of the aircraft involved. He was unable to give this information, but it is almost certain that the overwhelming majority of these aircraft were U.S. military flights. This is all the more likely given that, in an reply to a separate question, the Minister told me that the number of troops passing through Shannon in the first four months of this year amounted to 110,766, more than double the 47,149 for the same period in 2004.

“In his reply, Minister Brennan confirmed to me that military flights were effectively exempted from en-route charges and that his Department actually reimburses the Irish Aviation Authority for the charges that are lost as a result of this exemption. The amount paid by his Department to the Authority has shown a threefold increase since 2000 and the full figures in respect of each of the past five years were as follows: 2000 € 1,139,283 2001 € 1,377,560 2002 € 1,642,541 2003 € 2,148,374 2004 € 3,687,933


“In his reply the Minister says that the decision to exempt military aircraft from charges is based on a Eurocontrol (European Organisation for the safety of Air Navigation) Multilateral Agreement to which Ireland is a party. However, Ireland is clearly a significant loser here as very few
Irish military flights over-fly other countries, but our position on the edge of Europe means that many foreign military flights go through Irish controlled airspace.”

“A number of other neutral counties, including Austria, Finland and Switzerland do not grant exempted status to U.S. military flights. Surely it is time for Ireland to consider adopting a similar policy. It is bad enough that we should be allowing U.S. military flights to use or airspace and to land at Shannon, but it is surely totally unacceptable that the Irish taxpayer should be having to foot the bill for these flights.