Mr. Eamon Ryan:
I agree with Deputy Shortall that it would be entertaining to see the Minister scurrying over to the archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
All parties support this Bill and I cannot see Committee and Report Stages being contentious. I will comment, however, on how we deal with this legislation. I looked at the manner in which the British handled the passing of this Bill. The British Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions decided not to secure parliamentary time for the primary legislation but to amend the 1961 Act by affirmative secondary legislation. Perhaps the Minister will tell us in his reply if this might be possible in this case. There is a difficulty with Bills coming through the House that we cannot amend because they are tied to international conventions. It should be easy to find a mechanism agreed by the parties where non-contentious legislation would not use up valuable parliamentary time unnecessarily. The process of parliamentary debate is useful, it allows us to raise faults in legislation that would otherwise escape attention and I would never denigrate our fundamental role as legislators. However, with certain Bills, particularly those with a deadline, we might look to the example of Britain where this was achieved by affirmative secondary legislation, and see if we could follow a similar model. If not, I would not have a problem but it would be interesting to see if we could have dealt with this legislation in this way.
I broadly welcome this Bill and the Minister accurately reflected what it will achieve. The replacing of the Warsaw convention, which largely focused on the needs of the developing international airline industry, with the Montreal convention, which is more focused on consumer interests, is welcome. We should be able to pass this before 1 May, allowing the accession states to become party to it. I doubt people will be dancing in the streets on 1 May to U2 because we have passed the air navigation Bill but this House should be able to pass it by then.
The provisions in Article 57 of the convention allow state aircraft, particularly military aircraft, to be excluded under the terms and conditions of the convention. I am surprised to see that we are including this as a possibility because only three other countries that have passed the Bill have applied this article – the United States, Canada and Japan.
I echo Deputy Pat Breen’s concern, given the dramatic increase that has taken place in recent years in military traffic over Ireland and landing at Shannon Airport, about the provisions if there is a serious accident involving such foreign military aircraft which are exempted under the provisions of this convention. The Minister knows the figures – there were 3,691 foreign military over-flights in the last year, up from 2,460 in the previous year and only 1,770 the year before that. We are seeing a massive increase in the use of Irish airspace by foreign air forces. This year ten American divisions, 120,000 troops, have used Shannon Airport as their base in transit on the way to Iraq. Given such volumes the chances of an accident occurring are increasing significantly. What provisions are there if there is an accident involving a US, Japanese or Canadian military aircraft over-flying Ireland or if there is loss of life on the aircraft or on the ground? What consequences and liabilities would arise?
Will the Minister outline the circumstances in which this State would apply this? Why, of all the 50 countries that have signed up to this protocol, have only three opted to use Article 57 to exempt military and state flights? In what circumstances would we apply the provisions of the article?
We now have good international co-operation in aviation. While doing some research on the regulation of international shipping recently, it struck me that there is an astonishing lack of regulation in this area, with flags of convenience being used in many cases to remove the obligation to abide by standards, including international and local labour standards. While I welcome the Bill as a good example of international co-operation in action, I regret it is not in place in other areas of the transport sector which have an international dimension.
To follow up on the military issue, this is a good example of how international co-operation can work and the international community can do its business. Many of the problems and issues we face, whether in protecting consumers, the environment or our economy, must be addressed on an international basis. It is ironic that the United States Government, under President Clinton, gave the convention legal force when it became the 30th state to sign it, given that the US has been extremely remiss in failing to sign and support the Kyoto agreement.
As regards Deputy Pat Breen’s comments on the development of our aviation industry and the possibility of flights from every Irish airport heading in every direction, we need to recognise the massive environmental costs involved in high speed aviation. The damage being done by aircraft at a high stratospheric level, which has been recognised by a royal commission established by the United Kingdom Government to investigate this issue, will have massive consequences in terms of global warming. These will impose a limit on the development of the aviation industry and this should be acknowledged in every discussion of the sector.
