THE TAOISEACH HAS sought to distance the Government from the crisis in military air traffic control and said it is for military leadership to resolve. 

As reported by The Journal on Tuesday the Irish Air Corps is to end 24-hour operations and reduce its service to a five day week, 8am to 8pm in June as a crisis in air traffic control has reached a critical point. 

Air traffic control for the Air Corps is managed from Casement Aerodrome at Baldonnel in southwest Co Dublin.

The controllers based there manage the airspace around the airfield, which can include nighttime operations by military helicopters, Garda aircraft and fixed wing Defence Forces aircraft such as those used to monitor maritime activities off the coast. 

The Journal reported earlier this month on mounting fears that a shortage of the skilled military personnel who work in air traffic control could lead to a partial shutdown of the service. That has now come to pass. 

As revealed also by this news website the Department of Defence was warned in 2021 of the impending issue in an internal report but nothing was done to stem the exodus of highly trained controllers.  

When questioned today Taoiseach Micheál Martin distanced the Government from the crisis and said that it was a matter for the military to solve. 

“Certainly in my view, huge efforts have been made and huge resources have been put into the military particularly on the recruitment side.

“When I was minister, we brought in CPL [a recruitment agency] and others to change the methodology of recruitment and retention, and it can’t be just one installment after the other and one demand after the other.

“There’s been a very substantial investment in human resources in all three pillars of the military and the Army, Air Corps and navy, but some of the practices around recruitment or retention left a lot to be desired, perhaps, to be frank, that has changed. That will continue to change,” he said. 

The Taoiseach went on to say, when asked again if there will be enough air traffic controllers to run the Air Corps service that the Minister for Defence, Tánaiste Simon Harris, will liaise with military leadership about the issue.