French warships conducting exercises in Dublin bay

whydave

French warships were conducting an exercise in Dublin Bay is this clear breach of our neutrality. Said maneuvers came as news to Irish naval authority.

skelliser

ya they were ranting on about this on joe duffy during the week, think it was wednesday or thursday or i could have been friday, not sure!!, u can listen to it on the rte website

Manic Moran

I think someone just saw the French ships bobbing about in Dublin Bay on the way to Dublin, maybe waiting for their slips to open, and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Dublin Port's website currently has three naval vessels shown as docked: FGS Gorch Fock, the German three-master, and NF Thetis and Glycine, French Minesweepers if I don't miss my guess.

Such courtesy visits are anything but unusual, and since the slip bookings tend to be made in advance, I'd be more than a little surprised if nobody told the Government.

NTM

Zuiderzee

can you give us a link for that joe duffy show?

arybvtcw0eolkf

whydave wrote: »

French warships were conducting an exercise in Dublin Bay is this clear breach of our neutrality. Said maneuvers came as news to Irish naval authority.

Our WHAT?.

Zuiderzee

http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2008/pc/pod-v-260908-28m32s-liveline.mp3

cyrusdvirus

Manic Moran wrote: »

I think someone just saw the French ships bobbing about in Dublin Bay on the way to Dublin, maybe waiting for their slips to open, and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Dublin Port's website currently has three naval vessels shown as docked: FGS Gorch Fock, the German three-master, and NF Thetis and Glycine, French Minesweepers if I don't miss my guess.

Such courtesy visits are anything but unusual, and since the slip bookings tend to be made in advance, I'd be more than a little surprised if nobody told the Government.

NTM

It's much more fun to jump to completely irrational conclusions and start shouting "the russians are coming, the russians are coming" though..... :rolleyes:

Fratton Fred

were people really worried the French were about to invade?

where would we put all those prisoners?:D

sham08

I'd say the French are getting revenge for the NO vote :rolleyes:

Morpheus

"Carrying out exercises" this doesnt automatically mean that they are carrying out "offensive military" exercises, its a very grey and generic term used by a french speaker to an english speaker, maybe some information was lost in his translation.

Many vessels carry out fire drills, evacuation drills, movement drills etc which are non offensive but also necessary drills to be done in peace time and I reckon that this is what they were doing. There would be zero military exercises carried out if there was no clearance from the govt and as far as i know it is illegal to carry out offensive military exercises or to expend ordnance while inside irish territorial water (12 mile limit). Im sure this was harmless and that as soon as these non offensive exercises were completed they were proceeding to dublin.

All completely blown out of proportion.

also.... WERE NOT CONSTITUTIONALLY NEUTRAL so stop pretending we are.

the_syco

It's the French. Speak German, and they'll gtfo

whydave

Thanks for the feed back


David

NUTLEY BOY

I think that the "offender" was the THETIS according to the utterly ridiculous hype on Liveline.

Saw THETIS last weekend in Dublin docks. It is a touch larger than the biggest shed in the Argos catalogue.

Saw Gorch Fock too. Stunning sight. I would not like to be aboard her at present though as they seem to have had a recent tragedy. I believe that they lost an 18 y.o. female cadet over the side in the North Sea, at night, in early September. Body recovered eventually. That is rough.