The Irish taxpayer has footed a bill of €10 million over five years for foreign and military aircraft overflights, the majority of which would be the US military.
The details emerged yesterday in a reply to a parliamentary question from the Minister for Transport to Labour TD Róisín Shortall.
The US does not pay the bill for air-traffic control and communications services for aircraft passing through Irish-controlled airspace because it is exempted under a Eurocontrol agreement. The costs are paid by the Department of Transport to the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA).
Ms Shortall said the agreement applied to military and government-related business overflights, and it was almost certain that the majority of these aircraft were US military flights, many of them to Iraq.
The only other overflights could be, for instance, by heads of state, but the numbers would be small, she added.
Ms Shortall is calling for a review of the arrangement and for the Republic to opt out of the exemption agreement.
"The question of military aircraft using Irish airspace has always been a subject of controversy, but I believe the public will be shocked and surprised to find that the taxpayer is paying for the 'privilege'," she said.
It was all the more likely the majority were US military flights given that the Minister had said the number of troops passing through Shannon in the first four months of this year amounted to 110,766, more than double the 47,149 for the same period in 2004, Ms Shortall said. Individual member states could choose not to grant the exemption.
"We want the exemption lifted so that the US pays for the services. The amount paid by the department to the authority has shown a threefold increase since 2000." The State was clearly a significant loser, she added.
"It is bad enough that we should be allowing US military flights to use our airspace and to land at Shannon, but it is surely totally unacceptable that the Irish taxpayer should be having to foot the bill for these flights."
Minister for Transport Martin Cullen in his Dáil reply said the IAA provided air-traffic control and communications services to aircraft which passed through Irish airspace.
"Only a small proportion of military flights through Irish-administered airspace actually pass through Irish sovereign airspace. Irish-administered airspace covers 450,000 sq km, of which 83,000 sq km is sovereign airspace."
Like most Eurocontrol member states, since the early 1970s the State has exempted all such flights, including military flights of member states of Eurocontrol, the US and Canada.