Secret plan for UK to protect Irish skies

The Irish government is under pressure to come clean about a decades-old secret agreement with the UK for RAF aircraft to defend Irish airspace in an emergency.

Although “never officially confirmed”, the Anglo-Irish deal is understood to allow UK jets to “intercept threats” in Irish airspace, said Sky News.

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The first agreement was drawn up in the early 1950s, when tensions between the USSR and the West were “near boiling point”. Although neutral, Ireland was concerned it was “wholly unequipped” to detect or intercept any Soviet airborne threat. That threat was more than theoretical, because Ireland was next to the waters known as the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap, a “naval chokepoint” that would be “vital to control if hostilities broke out between the two superpowers”.

In addition to demands for increased transparency, there are also calls for Ireland to become more self-reliant in the air. A report from the Commission on the Defence Forces in 2022 found that Ireland was effectively defenceless on land, sea and in the air and it called for a new air squadron that would give Ireland its own “quick reaction alert” system, allowing it to respond to threats in its own airspace without relying on London.

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