Secret Plan For UK To Protect Irish Skies

Reference: Found here

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 .

Sinn F⁘in, the main opposition party in Ireland, is now demanding more transparency on the precise nature of the arrangement to ensure it's not in breach of Ireland's neutrality. Independent senator Gerard Craughwell, a veteran of both the British and Irish armed forces, has also launched a High Court case that would force the government to put the details before the Irish parliament.

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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".