Wallace: I was looking for evidence in Shannon

Independent TD Mick Wallace told a court he scaled a fence at Shannon Airport to search a US military plane after a Government minister told him to go get the evidence of arms on the planes.

At Ennis District Court, Mick Wallace said that you would not read it in The Beano the Government’s incredulous story that there was no concrete evidence that there were arms or munitions on US planes landing at Shannon.

“On two occasions when former minister for justice Alan Shatter was being finished being as derogatory as he could with me, he told me to go and get the evidence,” said Mr Wallace.

“And that is exactly what we went to do when we went over the fence in Shannon — to find their so-called concrete evidence.”

“Under no circumstances were we going to be allowed in and search the planes and the only chance we would have of searching the planes was to get over the fence illegally and search the planes ourselves.

“We went to every measure possible not to put anyone else at risk.

“We wanted to search the planes. We didn’t want to break the peace. We wanted to keep it.”

Mr Wallace and colleague Clare Daly were both appearing concerning their alleged illegal entrance into a restricted area of Shannon Airport on July 22.

Mr Wallace said there was no transparency or accountability over what is happening at Shannon

He said that Ireland has allowed the US military to use Shannon Airport “to carry out carnage on a worldwide level”.

In her evidence, Ms Daly said that she had no choice but to highlight the use of Shannon by the US military when she scaled a fence at the airport in July last.

Mr Daly told the court that Shannon is a key cog in the US military machine.

In evidence, she said that she had a responsibility to highlight the use of Shannon, stating that more than 2m US troops trained to kill, or half the population of Ireland, has gone through the airport to fight US wars.

In evidence, Ms Daly admitted that she did go over the fence and was airside without permission.

Earlier in evidence, anti-war activist Margaretta D’Arcy said that the court supports the status duo, stating “this is not a court that supports justice”.

She said that ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ dominates the mindset in Ireland in relation to the use of Shannon by the US military.

Judge Patrick Durcan adjourned the case to April 15 for mention.