Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

The RAF Harriers had no radar, no long range Anti Air Missiles, slow (for interceptors), and short ranged. They are ground attack aircraft primarily. Only the Sea Harriers had radar. but had similar limitations. The US ones have Radar, but still aren't interceptors. Hence why they use the UK ones as parts bins for theirs. Its also one of the harder aircraft to fly. They just aren't suited to the current Irish requirement.

Brilliant aircraft though.

In a modern context its design compromised its speed and stealth potential and payload, going forward. There was a proposal for a "Super Harrier" but they ultimately went the F35 route instead.

Personally I think the Harrier still is a useful aircraft (not for Ireland). But they are shrinking fleets to put the money in fewer more advanced aircraft. Hence why they want to dump the A10 and F15 in the US.

@Mr Disco Harriers are really not that useful. For a start they cannot really do an interecpt. They are not that fast, a bit faster than the PC9s but intercept jets need to be really fast to catch up with the thing they are trying to catch. For instance, an unidentified aircraft travelling at 36,000 feet at 600 mph shows on Irish radar.Unless the aircraft is going to fly more or less over an Irish airbase then the interceptor must catch up with and intercept a plane travelling, possibly away from it at 600mph. As you can see the interceptor really needs to be at least capable of twice that speed to stand a fair chance of making the intercept. The only people to use it in such a role were the RN, but in this context it was to intercept aircraft flying to your ship, so speed is not so important when they are heading your way. But I agree, if Ireland is going to acquire fast combat jets they should be multi-role. But that means not just buying multirole aircraft, it means training multirole pilots, and different types of munitions. One of the big problems the RAF and other top tier airforces have is that they have multirole aircraft, but pilots only trained for one role, meaning their supposedly multi-role aircraft is not really able to function in that manner.

A Harrier is twice as fast as a PC9. Still too slow. But it's not in anyway similar to a PC9. PC9 is slower than spitfire.

@Flinty997 "A Harrier is twice as fast as a PC9. Still too slow. But it's not in anyway similar to a PC9. PC9 is slower than spitfire." Actually the difference in capability in the intercept role is not that great. For a start the PC( can sustain its 370MPH longer than the Harrier can sustain 600MPH. Also the interceptor weaponry of the harrier, sidwinders and Aim120s, well PC9 can take sidewinders although no one uses it in an intercept role. The wider point though still stands, from an intercept point of view Harriers would give Ireland very little extra capability beyond what it already has. And then there are all the other problems with a very old platform.

Even Sky have picked up the story:

https://news.sky.com/story/irish-ministers-under-pressure-to-clarify-secret-deal-for-raf-to-defend-irelands-airspace-in-an-emergency-12879084

Its pretty much a rehash of the Journal one I think, not the first time that reporter has repackaged a story from Irish news for Sky News.

Totally agree with, lets be honest it was always likely to be someone say "cop the feck on lads" to even start things, that or something catastrophic that has everyone pointing fingers (lets hope it doesn't come to that), I wonder if the Brits had been charging us noticeable amounts of money for the coverage since the 1950's would that have changed things?

That journal piece seem to have widely circulated. Its hit a number of sites I follow.

I wonder did Leo talk about it with the  Air Commodore-in-Chief of the RAF when he met him recently.

Oh bejaysus..

Pretty much yeah. Surprised the Torygraph hasn’t run with it yet tbh.

That's not how it works at all. Interceptor flys along side path of R bomber and forces it to change course. At worst fires a few cannon shells in front of it to drive home the message. Launch missles at Irish cities! no way. What type of long range missiles did you think they would use? Nuclear hardly. Even non nuclear launched from Subs would probably be interpreted as a possible first strike attack on the UK and force them to respond immediately.

I think you are missing we are geographically impossible to attack with anything. The country identifies as 'unreachable' and 'invulnerable'.