November 20th 2007

The Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea, T.D., has secured Cabinet approval for the deployment of 400 Irish troops for the UN mandated EU military operation in the Republic of Chad. Minister O’Dea will now proceed to seek Dáil approval for the mission. This will complete the Triple Lock mechanism of UN, Government and Dáil approval before deploying members of the Defence Forces overseas.

Ireland will play a significant and substantive role in this mission as the second largest contributor and provider of the overall Operation Commander: Lt. Gen Pat Nash.

“Our contribution represents the Defence Forces’ most ambitious and challenging overseas deployment to date. Our role is threefold: to help establish a safe and secure environment for refugees, to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the refugees and to protect UN and humanitarian personnel. The carnage in Darfur coupled with the multiple conflicts in the border areas between Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic has scarred the lives of countless thousands of innocent men, women and children. It will be our job to help and protect them and today the Government accepted my recommendation to deploy to the region,” stated Minister O’Dea.

“Yesterday in Brussels, I met with Lt General Pat Nash who briefed Ministers on the mission’s current state of preparedness, particularly on the emerging gaps in transport resources, especially the heavy airlift and helicopter assets. On foot of that briefing I urged my EU colleagues at the joint meeting of EU Defence and Foreign Ministers to move quickly to address these shortfalls in the force structure. I am confident they will be addressed satisfactorily as gaps of this nature are not unusual during the planning phase of any overseas operation. A Force Generation conference is taking place tomorrow (Wednesday November 21st) in Brussels to specifically address these key issues and I will then discuss the outcome of this meeting with military officials,” added Minister O’Dea.

Ends.