Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea expects to secure final Cabinet approval this month for purchase of three new patrol vessels for the Naval Service.
Referring to the cocaine seizures off the southwest coast, Mr O'Dea said that it was a very good time to be looking at additional resources for coastal protection, and the Naval Service had an important role to play in this.
The LE Orla was involved in yesterday's continued search, co-ordinated by the Garda Síochána. The Revenue Commissioners, which has a customs patrol vessel, would also be looking for a review of its resource requirements very shortly, Mr O'Dea noted.
The Minister told The Irish Times yesterday that the Government was committed to the fleet upgrade, and he intended to present a memo to Cabinet "within the next couple of weeks".
The new vessels will replace the existing patrol ships, LE Emer, LE Aoife and LE Aisling, which are due to be decommissioned.
The Naval Service has recommended that one of the three replacements should be a larger vessel of up to 120m (394ft), which could provide humanitarian relief and troop support in any part of the world. It would also be designed for fishery protection duties in Irish waters.
Two additional vessels of about 80m (262ft) each would be slightly larger than the most recent builds - the LE Róisín and LE Niamh, the latter having been delivered in 2001. The total bill for all three new ships has been estimated at up to €80 million, but the Minister said yesterday that he was looking at expenditure of about "€30 million a pop".
Meanwhile, he made presentations of paintings to a number of sail training organisations yesterday in his capacity as chairman of Coiste an Asgard, the company responsible for the State's sail training brigantine, Asgard II.
Dublin Port, Dublin City Council, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, the John F Kennedy Trust, and Waterford city and port, which hosted a leg of the 2005 tall ships race, accepted framed prints of Irish Tall Ships 2005 by Kenneth King.
