Gavan Reilly: Four little drones have poked an almighty hole in our skies
A common practice of TV stations is to ask senior ministers – including, on the biggest issues, the Taoiseach – if they can give a reaction, on camera, to major stories as they emerge. Often, they turn down the request: much as politicians want to be heard, those in charge have a natural instinct against being seen as powerless spectators.
In its own way, then, it’s interesting for journalists to take note of the stories that ministers do choose to speak on. Such was the case on Monday morning when we got word that yes, the Taoiseach would accept the invite to offer a TV clip about the fire in Edenderry.
I’ll write about his answer to that elsewhere on this page. What was even more telling in this instance, was that the Taoiseach was agreeing to speak when we had learned about the sighting of unidentified drones over Dublin Bay.
It’s no exaggeration to say that those drones are a political scandal, nationally and internationally. Internationally, if the suspicions about Russia’s involvement are proven, the move will be seen as indefensibly provocative. Nationally, however, those four or five drones are enormously damaging: they prove that it isn’t just fancy-dan fighter jets we are incapable of spotting and taking down. Even something small, barely bigger than a wooden pallet, can provocatively circle around our naval vessels… and there’s precious little we can do about it. (In fairness, it would perhaps have been unwise to try and shoot them down, given they were circulating in the arrival path towards Dublin Airport.)
And the timing, lest anyone need reminding, is extraordinary. Had Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plane arrived on the trajectory and timings expected, those drones would have been directly in its path. And that’s one leader, on one jet, on one visit.
There will be more to come: when we’re holding the rotating EU presidency in the second half of next year, there’ll be ministerial visitors from 26 other member states pretty much fortnightly. In fact, if current precedent is anything to go by, there’ll be a regular presence of ministers from Ukraine too. At some stage during those six months, there’ll also be a meeting of the ‘European Political Community’ – a sort of super-summit where up to 50 European countries and organisations could send reps.
That is already an enormous security undertaking: Dublin Castle is already out of action for political events, getting prepared for that job. There’s only one airport with the capacity to receive so many private aircraft. There’s only a handful of venues that are big enough to hold the events that are part of the rotation.
And, now, there are germane questions about whether we’re capable of keeping all those high-profile visitors safe.
We might have thought that, because we’re not in NATO and generally don’t take provocative actions, we would not face such provocation. That error is worth reflecting on: the mere presence of European neighbours is enough to drag us in.
And what is the government doing? The National Security Council will meet, for the first time… sometime in the next fortnight. Hmm.