Expert group warned military air traffic control staffing issue would re-emerge
An expert group urged four years ago for a special payment to be given to military air traffic controllers to dissuade them from leaving the
Defence Forces
for the private sector.
It is understood the 2021 report was not acted upon, and the service is now facing a new staffing crisis.
The group's report argued that problems with the operation of military
air traffic control
services would continue to emerge every few years if issues continued to be tackled on an ad hoc basis.
The report, drawn up by a joint
Department of Defence
and Defence Forces group, recommended introducing a service commitment scheme that would boost pay for air traffic control personnel.
READ MORE
The report said 'stability must be ensured through retaining experience and stopping air traffic service personnel numbers dropping further'.
It urged adopting a 'blended approach of incentives and undertakings' to minimise 'premature voluntary retirements'.
'Having a pathway for personnel who complete training to take up a role (and technical pay) specific to their skill set, or the ability to pay qualified controllers the appropriate technical pay after completing their training, would mitigate the impact of gaps within the unit,' the report said.
It is understood the 2021 report was not acted upon, and the service is now facing a new staffing crisis.
Last week it emerged that an acute shortage of trained air traffic controllers (ATCs) at the
Air Corps
' only base at Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, Dublin, is expected to lead to
military flight operations being restricted
to a five-day-a-week, daytime-only schedule.
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Parlous state of Defence Forces once again laid bare
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The move will have huge implications for rescue, medical and policing services that use the Baldonnel airbase.
The 505 Squadron, which is responsible for air traffic control, is supposed to have 21 personnel but in recent years it has been operating at about 50 per cent capacity.
Five personnel are due to depart shortly for the private sector, necessitating the move to a reduced schedule, which takes effect from June 7th.
The 2021 report recommended reforms to training, recruitment and retention.
However, it warned that having non-military personnel run the air traffic service in its entirety or contracting it out to an external provider is 'not an option'.
The report said there should be a minimum of 32 personnel in the air traffic control unit. It said personnel undergoing training should have to make a four-year commitment.
[
State attempting to reach settlements with Air Corps chemical victims, Tánaiste says
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The Air Corps is responsible for air navigation in airspace designated for use by the Defence Forces. In 2016 the retirement of key personnel led to a restriction on operations. A full 24-hour service was restored in 2021.
The joint review group was established to identify options for the long-term sustainability of the air traffic service at Baldonnel.
The report said issues related to the air traffic service in the past were 'largely dealt with in an ad hoc manner'.
'Maintaining such an approach will lead to problems continuing or re-emerging from time to time every number of years.'
It said the military air traffic service is 'a strategic asset' that ensures air connectivity for the State.
'Casement Aerodrome is the only secure military airfield within the State, and is itself a strategic asset. Military air traffic service plays a vital role in maintaining this capability and in ensuring the security of operations in interactions with other agencies,' the report said.
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Irish Times
36 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange
Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange Author : Katie Goh ISBN-13 : 978-1805301738 Publisher : Canongate Guideline Price : £16.99 I'll be honest with you, I don't even like oranges. They're too messy. Drippy, sticky; forever associated in my mind with my schoolmates' grubby little fingers clawing at the thick glossy skin at breaktimes or on the bus. Ugh! Somebody give that child a wet wipe. But for the Irish writer and critic Katie Goh, the messiness of the orange is exactly the point. As her superbly reflective, restive, and revealing book shows, this fruit that many of us take for granted has a fascinating and thoroughly messy history. Its millenniums-long narrative criss-crosses the globe from western China to southern California and back again, cropping up all over the place, especially in accounts that the author refuses to clean up or sanitise – of colonial expansion, racialised bigotry, and capitalist exploitation. 'The orange is a souvenir of history,' she writes, 'entangled with the story of migration, of exile, and of invasion'. It's tangled up with her own story, too. She started writing the book in the aftermath of a mass shooting in Atlanta on March 17th, 2021, that left six Asian women dead at the hands of a white male supremacist. Anti-Asian sentiment had risen sharply during the pandemic, but this was a terrifying escalation. She remembers: 'The morning after a white man murdered six Asian women, I ate five oranges.' READ MORE Out of this moment, charged with shock and horror, where the eating of oranges was like grieving, like a tribute to those who were murdered, came an impulse to trace the roots of her identity in parallel with the oranges she held in her hands. Goh was born and raised outside Belfast, the child of an Irish mother and a Chinese father, in a place that was 99 per cent white; so white, she says, that she could count on the fingers of one hand the non-white children in her school. When she was growing up, she felt her difference acutely but couldn't really inhabit it. Being mixed-race, she found herself pulled in two directions, falling between categories – 'not Asian or White but Other'. She also had an inkling that she was queer, 'not Straight or Gay but Other'. Lingering in this space of otherness instilled in her a lifelong feeling of dislocation, and a desire for connection 'to a place, to a history, to a sense of belonging'. Foreign Fruit tracks her pursuit of that connection alongside a global history of the orange, which becomes for her 'a talisman, a compass, an anchor, a map', inextricable from its origins in Chinese antiquity. The first mention of oranges can be found in the Shūjīng, the ancient Chinese documents compiled by Confucius as early as 500 BC, and Goh's book starts in China, with a trip to Fujian, where her father's people once lived before they emigrated to Malaysia. From the sparsely populated villages of her ancestors, she travels to the heaving streets of Chang'an, the world's marketplace, haggling with a fruit vendor in the town 'where the Silk Roads begin and end and where they begin anew'. Returning to Europe, in the Netherlands, she reflects on the spoils of colonial warfare and greed represented by a Willem Kalf still life of an orange and a lemon dating from 1660. In Vienna, she visits the Schönbrunn Orangerie, an ostentatious symptom of the 'citrusmania' that spread across Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Crossing the Atlantic, she delivers a detailed and emotional investigation of the orange's history in California that confronts the violent impact on immigrant communities of the early-20th century 'orange rush'. Goh is a bold new voice in Irish writing. In less capable hands, a personal history of the orange could be an opportunity merely to write one's life in citrus, to absorb one into the other. But as the author reminds us, there are dangers in taking people for plants, which have historically threatened people of colour: eugenicists in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, for instance, endeavoured to 'control, curtail, cull' non-white populations as they did their orange groves. The sophistication of Goh's thinking shows itself in the glimmer of daylight she leaves between human and fruit. Foreign Fruit is a stunning, stylish search for origins reminiscent of books like Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother, and the work of queer writers like James Baldwin, who called himself 'a stranger everywhere' and whose rootlessness was a creative wellspring. 'The borders between what is native and what is foreign become hazier as we step back into the past,' remarks Goh, and her forays across the world and through time attest to the power and the imaginative richness of movement, migration, messiness – the in-between of assumed positions. 'The world is made of hybrids,' she writes. 'Purity is an illusion.' Dr Diarmuid Hester is a cultural historian, activist, and author
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
Letters to the Editor, June 3rd: On Arts Council funding, disappearing fish and czars
Sir, – At the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing on May 29th, Deputy Joanna Byrne of Sinn Féin made the observation that Arts Grant Funding (AGF) seems to disproportionately favour Dublin-based companies over regional arts initiatives. The Director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly's response was to point to increased funding to arts centres throughout the State and the impressive number of touring weeks that companies like Irish National Opera (INO) undertake throughout the year. If I may say so, this is far from the full picture. Funding the running of arts centres is one thing but you only have to look at their programmes to see that there is a preponderance of commercial and community/amateur arts events over professional funded arts programming. READ MORE So the availability of regionally grown professional arts events and productions is key to addressing this programming imbalance. Parachuting in touring theatre and opera from Dublin, while occasionally welcome, contributes very little to the ecology of the regional arts. As a client of the Arts Council going back 40 years or more and encompassing my time as artistic director of Opera Theatre Company (a forerunner to INO) and artistic director of the Abbey, both Dublin-based companies, and latterly as a former director of the Theatre Royal, Waterford, it has long been my contention that properly resourcing regional professional arts initiatives and companies is an important way of ensuring the fair spatial distribution of arts funding. My views on this are well known at the Arts Council. Most recently I wrote to the director and chair with support from 20 of my colleagues to reiterate this point. Properly resourcing regional arts will allow professional artists to work and live – if only for part of the time – in the place of their choosing rather than necessarily gravitating to places of higher population for all of their work. As we know there is a broader societal trend of people moving away from large urban centres for a less expensive and better quality of life. By way of example, Four Rivers, a Wexford-based initiative, was funded by the Arts Council from 2021-2024 to prioritise working with southeast based artists, or artists with connections to the region. We foregrounded new and established work and engaged in partnerships – primarily with Wexford Arts Centre and the National Opera House – to provide professional theatre in the southeast. Our grant-in-aid was modest but welcome and by 2024 allowed us to produce three good quality productions annually. That year we increased our audiences to in excess of 90 per cent of capacity – the figures are available and audited – and yet the outcome of our Arts Council funding application for 2025 – with the same mix of work and priorities that were successfully funded from 2021-2024 – inexplicably went from €205,000 to zero. When we requested an explanation we were told that the award was 'very competitive' and other applications were 'more compelling'. Which really told us nothing. The momentum we had thus built up was, and is, in danger of being squandered. In developing a new strategy to replace Great Art Works, the Arts Council needs to be mindful of the development and sustaining of regional professional arts companies in theatre and other disciplines that are embedded in their communities and not only provide employment to artists but help provide the kind of programming to arts centres that is currently largely unavailable to them. – Yours, etc, BEN BARNES, New Ross, Co Wexford. Panda's eyes Sir, – I've just received an email from Panda (my 'chosen home recycling partner') informing me that from June 12th the company's collection trucks 'will photograph and identify misplaced items within your bins'. Presumably, all its customers have received similar notification. As a result of this initiative, can we expect to see a marked increase in the sale of heavy-duty, black refuse sacks – the type that a standard camera cannot see through? – Yours, etc, PAUL DELANEY, Dalkey. Investing in education Sir, – David McWilliams (' Ireland is making progress, one mortar board at a time,' Weekend, May 31st) writes that 'Education is the best way out of poverty. Education today is an investment in tomorrow'. I fully concur. Access to educational resources on computers improves the quality of education delivered and outcomes for students. This access is often not affordable for young people living below the poverty line. However, in Ireland, hundreds of thousands of computers are replaced every year but only a small percentage are assessed for reuse as a resource to enhance young people's education and their life prospects. They are instead recycled when, alternatively, if assessed for reuse they could have a valuable social impact in improving young people's education. It is time for the Government to urge commercial and public sector organisations to consider the reusability of retired IT assets as an education resource instead of merely choosing the less environmentally friendly option of recycling. – Yours, etc, MARK FOX, Dublin 18. Striking a czar note Sir, – One of the more amusing aspects of current debates is the proliferation of the term 'czar', a rather curious moniker in this day and age. There are suggestions that Dublin could do with a 'night czar' while plans are afoot to entrust Ireland's accommodation problem to a 'housing czar', no less. Perhaps anybody seriously considering applying for the thankless task of tackling and solving the housing issue would do well to reflect on the fate which through the ages has befallen people who have borne the title of 'czar' in its myriad linguistic variations. Julius Caesar came to a sticky end in Rome, Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate and flee into a very comfortable exile, while his first World War ally, Kaiser Karl I of Austria-Hungary, was banished to a considerably less comfortable sojourn far from home. Their joint foe on the Eastern Front, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, was assassinated, together with all his family and servants, in a cellar in the Urals and, during a later conflict, Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria may have died further to an Adolf Hitler-inspired plot using a sophisticated method of poisoning. Touch wood that, if and when a lady or gentleman is duly appointed to do battle with the housing dragon, the title bestowed shall be neither 'Tsarina' nor 'Tsar' but the rather more utilitarian, if slightly less exotic, 'Director or Head of Housing'. And, when the time comes, the good wishes of all shall be with anybody brave enough to get into the saddle and ride off into battle. – Yours, etc, STEPHEN O'SULLIVAN, Paris, France. Sir. – I have to agree with Graham Doyle, secretary general at the Department of Housing, a housing tsar is not required. What would be more appropriate is a High King of Housing in Ireland who could rule rather than reign over a new house building kingdom. – Yours, etc, DERMOT O'ROURKE, Lucan, Dublin. Ireland and Israeli bonds Sir, – Notwithstanding the Irish Government's recent defeat of a Private Members' Bill attempting to block the trade in Israeli bonds facilitated through the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), that institution has been remiss when reviewing the previous Israeli prospectus and must now insist that any future prospectus be truly comprehensive. Since 2021, the CBI has approved our prospectuses to enable Israel to issue bonds within the EU. Gabriel Makhlouf, governor of CBI, has previously defended the approval of Israel's prospectus documentation stating that, as a competent authority of the EU Central Bank, the CBI must approve any prospectus for a bond issue that is clear, comprehensible, comprehensive and fulfils all necessary criteria as laid down in the annexes contained in legislation. However, the last prospectus provided by Israel was far from comprehensive in several of the sections that are key to the approval. For a bond prospectus to be approved, the issuer must provide a comprehensive list of risks that may impact investors' return on the bonds. Up to 2024, Israeli prospectuses have laid out various security, economic, wartime and political risks that might impact the state's ability (or desire) to repay investment in the bonds. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found it plausible that Israel's acts could amount to genocide and issued six provisional measures, ordering Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocidal acts, including preventing and punishing incitement to genocide, ensuring aid and services reach Palestinians under siege in Gaza, and preserving evidence of crimes committed in Gaza. This interim statement from the ICJ issued a caution to the state of Israel that the court shall continue to evaluate the case against Israel and subsequently deliver its final decision. However, section 2 (Risks) of Israel's prospectus, approved by CBI in September 2024, made no mention of the risk of an adverse finding by the ICJ against Israel or the possibility of international sanctions against Israel based on evidence of the IDF's conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. For this reason, it could not be considered to contain a 'comprehensive' list of risks. In addition, section 8 'Use of Proceeds' contains only the following sentence: 'The net proceeds from the issue of the Bonds are intended to be used for the general financing purposes of the Issuer.' This bland formula was accepted by the CBI despite the sections entitled 'Description of the Issuer' and 'Recent Events' being full of references to Israel's 'war' efforts. The Israeli government may not wish to acknowledge that it is 'in the dock' before the ICJ, that the ICJ may find it guilty of committing genocide and that countries may consequently impose sanctions against Israel. Regardless of the ICJ's final decision, which may take years to arrive, any sovereign country or their private citizens may decide to boycott Israeli goods and services. That such risks may be embarrassing to Israel and may draw attention to its increasing isolation in international relations should be of no concern to the Central Bank of Ireland. These factors represent additional risks to investors in the bonds and should be present in any comprehensive prospectus relating to the bond issue. Israel's bond issue expires at the end of August and must be renewed in September. As a competent authority of the EU, the Central Bank of Ireland must insist that the prospectus be comprehensive, whether or not the bond issuer loses face through that completeness. It behoves Mr Makhlouf to ensure the CBI fulfils its responsibilities to the full. – Yours, etc, Cllr JOHN HURLEY, Social Democrat, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, Co Dublin. Sir, – I'm hoping the Taoiseach and Tánaiste will have read Mark O'Connell's excellent piece in Saturday's paper (' I walked through the fire all by myself'' – this is barbarism' , Opinion, May 31st). The rawness of the piece and how it exposes the complicit impotence of western governments to what is happening in Gaza is powerful. It holds in contrast the EU's rapid reaction to Russia's aggression in Ukraine to its paralysis at the Israeli genocide in Gaza. If our leaders really cared about international law and the future of a viable Palestinian state, they would be working day and night to enact the Occupied Territories Bill before the summer recess, and pushing others in the EU to do the same. – Yours, etc, BARRY WALSH, Blackrock, Cork. Biodiversity and housing Sir, – Paul O'Shea's excellent letter ( Letters, May 31st ) argues that as well as the issue of house-building, climate change still needs to be urgently addressed, such as by improving rural land use. Although new urban and suburban house planning and building address climate change in some ways, there is siloed thinking that excludes serious attention to how biodiversity could be improved while providing housing. Even a prescription for one fruit tree or bee-friendly plant per housing unit would help instead of acres of gravel and occasional token vegetation. – Yours, etc, TRICIA CUSACK, Co Wicklow. Disappearing mackerel Sir, – Katie Mellett reported on the collapse of whale-watching off the Cork coast ( 'It's an empty, lifeless sea: Whales leave Cork waters, putting watchers out of business,' May 29th ). Colm Barnes, an experienced fisherman, explained to her that almost all the whales have disappeared because their food source, sprat, are being fished out by huge fishing vessels. We have been fishing for mackerel for 40 years on Kenmare Bay, a Special Area of Conservation. The mackerel have disappeared for the same reason. They feed on sprat, as you can see when you gut them. In recent years in winter, huge fishing vessels sweep the bay in pairs, with massive fine mesh nets held between them. It is obvious that they are contributing to destroying the mackerel fishery in the bay, affecting small-scale fishing which is important to locals and visitors, doing untold damage there and beyond in the open sea. One other consequence has been the virtual disappearance of the magnificent gannets from the upper bay and it's likely that other diving birds have been affected. The well publicised and ongoing destruction of this special area has been tolerated for some years by the authorities, ignoring their stated commitment to conservation. For example, it has been highlighted by the UCC Green Campus Group and by the brilliant transition year students from Pobalscoil Inbhear Scéine, Kenmare, who have produced an informative and evocative video. We are delighted to learn that Minister of State for Fisheries and the Marine Michael Healy-Rae is taking up this matter. We hope he will listen especially carefully to the young people of Ireland who are telling us to ban industrial fishing from Irish inshore waters now. – Yours, etc, DAVID and JANET MCCONNELL, CATHERINE FAYEN, DAVE and CHERRIE LOWE, DAVID O'SULLIVAN, BRYAN MAYBURY, FIONA THORNTON, Co Kerry. Name change Sir, – My original surname was three letters long. I wished I'd had a longer one. On marriage, almost 50 years ago, my wish was granted. The difference is unbelievable! – Yours, etc, RUTH GILL, Birr, Co Offaly. Going grey Sir, – Is a grey squirrel not an old red squirrel? (Squirrel spotting, Letters, June 2nd ). – Yours, etc, EUGENE TANNAM, Dublin.
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
Irish manufacturing output growing for fifth straight month
Irish manufacturing output recorded another 'robust increase' in May, extending the current period of growth to five months, according to AIB . Some Irish firms recorded subdued spending by US clients, but concerns about the impact of tariffs and global economic uncertainty had eased slightly in May. The bank's manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) retracted slightly to 52.6 in May, after April's 34-month high of 53.0. The index remained above the neutral 50 threshold, indicating overall expansion in the sector for the fifth month running, the longest growth sequence in more than two years. READ MORE The latest improvement in overall business conditions was driven by relatively strong rates of output and new business growth, AIB said. 'The rise in May was broad-based, with robust growth in output and new orders, and signs of easing tariff-related concerns,' said David McNamara, AIB chief economist. Mr McNamara said the reading for the Irish manufacturing industry 'remains above the flash May readings for the Eurozone, US and UK at 49.4, 52.3 and 45.1, respectively'. AIB has increased its activity expectations for manufacturing business, having recovered from April's eight-month low. Staff hiring has increased to its fastest rate since January, in reaction to rising workloads and improving projections for customer demand. 'Export sales remained a weak spot in May, with total new work from abroad decreasing for the second month running,' the PMI said, noting anecdotal evidence from goods producers that export demand from US and UK clients was down on the previous month. [ EU warns it could accelerate retaliatory tariffs over US duties Opens in new window ] The destocking streak ongoing since February continued in May, with survey respondents indicating deliberate inventory reduction strategies or subdued demand as causal factors. Manufacturers saw a 'further sharp increase' in input prices, down only slightly from the 26-month high in April with the input price inflation linked to commodities and other raw materials. There was a corresponding level of output price inflation which increased slightly, with manufacturers passing on higher input costs they incurred in May, but AIB's chief economist noted the rate of inflation remains 'well below that observed throughout the past 12 months'. 'Despite ongoing geopolitical and tariff uncertainty, Irish manufacturers maintained a generally upbeat assessment of the outlook for activity levels over the coming year. 'Around 39 per cent of the respondents predict a rise in output levels during the year ahead, while 9 per cent expect a decline,' Mr McNamara said, reflecting data collected from the May 12th to 22nd.
