Richmond said that officials in the region and in the crisis consular centre had worked very hard to get 300 Irish citizens on a plane tomorrow from Muscat to Dublin to complement another Emirates commercial flight tonight.

A senator has asked an EU anti-fraud watchdog to investigate whether the State is failing to inspect ‘high-risk flights’ into Shannon Airport.

The proposal is contained in the party’s ‘Positive Neutrality’ policy document, which was launched by foreign affairs spokesperson Gary Gannon, and Patricia Stephenson, the Social Democrats general election candidate in Carlow-Kilkenny