Airport could be suitable for humanitarian corps

WHILE the Irish Aid report says Shannon could still be a suitable location for an EU Civil Protection hub, Minister for State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Joe Costello, said a recent European decision means this is no longer a runner.
“There’s a commitment from the EU to provide civil defence, [to respond to things like] earthquakes and catastrophes within the EU. The original proposal was that it be consolidated in one location. That would require a huge logisitical capacity and training and all the rest of it. That’s not my area so I referred it to the Minister for the Environment but shortly after it went there, about a month ago, the EU member states decided the best way of dealing with this would be for each state to have its own civil defence, rather than to centralise it, as had been the intention of the commission,” he told The Clare Champion.
The Labour TD felt it had been worth exploring Shannon’s potential as a humanitarian aid hub. “There’s a commitment in the Lisbon Treaty to humanitarian aid development. While the United Nations has a number of depots around the world the European Union doesn’t and it was in that context that we wanted to look at the feasibility of whether Ireland would be a location. It has the capacity, has the runways and we’re a neutral country. The difficulty, of course, is that our strengths are our weaknesses as well; we’re on the edge of Europe and the first and foremost we would need to be cover the European area but there are UN depots in other areas. Ireland is an area that has very few catastrophes, very few major earthquakes or tsunamis. We examined all of it and the end result is that it’s a non-runner in that respect because it would be too expensive.”
He said there is another possibility still there. “There is a third thing we’re looking at, at the present time. That is another commitment in the Lisbon Treaty to set up a humanitarian corps. In Ireland, we have a rapid-response unit that will respond to something like what happened in Haiti or a tsunami, where we have qualified people who are able to leave at short notice, who would have the skills required. Under the auspices of the Lisbon Treaty, there is a special provision for humanitarian aid and a humanitarian aid corps.
“What’s being proposed is a corps of 10,000 people. The proposals have only come out recently and have to be worked through,” Deputy Costello said.
The creation of such a corps could open the door for developments at Shannon. “There would have to be training in a multitude of catastrophic situations. It would require a lot of training and probably a lot of materials to be made available, a lot of logistics and it could be something that a country like Ireland would be in a position to do a lot of. It’s something we have to progress through the EU during our presidency. It’ll have to go through the various countries and we’d have to get a budget for it. Somewhere like Shannon would have the capacity at short notice to deal with large numbers of people, which would require materials.”