NAVAL SERVICE DRUG PATROLS

Sir,

Winning the war against drugs is a noble aim, but it will not be furthered
by the sort of special interest lobbying quoted in your Southern Report of
April 4th. The key to successful drugs interdiction is knowing the point of
shipment and reception. The role of the Naval Service is to act on
intelligence provided by the Garda and the Customs Service.

Across the world, the consistent experience has been that little is achieved
by additional "blind patrolling". In other words, whatever benefits may or
may not accrue from having a larger fleet, it would be naive in the extreme
to rely on a policy of naval expansion to solve this very difficult and
entrenched problem which has confounded governments throughout the
industrial world. Moreover, the judgment of misstating and oversimplifying
the facts of this tragic situation to facilitate sectoral lobbying is very
much open to question.

That said, the Naval Service has a contribution to make as part of an
integrated team effort in combating drugs. To equate the efforts of the
Naval Service with a single Garda patrol car is a rather silly and
superficial comparison. Leaving aside the rather obvious fact that a price
of pounds 20 million, each additional Naval Service ship costs as much as
the entire fleet of Garda patrol cars put together, and notwithstanding the
motives of those who make this comparison, it is in fact an insulting
denigration of the contribution currently made by the Naval Service.

Yours, etc.,

John Nolan, Press Officer, Department of Defence, Infirmary Road, Dublin 7.