The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Ireland, Thomas C Foley, is of the view that the Irish government should “move on” from the issue of U.S. military flights at Shannon Airport, and should not raise the matter with the incoming Obama administration.

According to a report in the Sunday Business Post, the Irish government said recently that it would approach the new administration on the issue of so-called “extraordinary rendition” and would ensure that gardaí and airport authorities had powers to search aircraft.

However, Ambassador Foley said he believed it would be a mistake to do this.

“I think it would be a mistake if Ireland were the first to come out of the box with that in a new administration,” Foley told the Business Post.

“It would be a waste of political capital because it’s an old issue and it’s time to move on. It was resolved long ago. Your own government said it was and they received that word from our government. There wasn’t any evidence that any rendition flights ever transited through Ireland,” Foley said.

Foley, who is a Bush appointee, will himself fly out of Ireland at the end of January. Robert Faucher, his deputy, will serve as acting ambassador. A replacement for Foley is expected to take some months to announce.

Foley is the no-nonsense sort. Before Ireland, he worked for the Bush White House in Iraq and, as a result, is well up to speed on the rendition issue, which itself is nothing new at the U.S. embassy in Ballsbridge.

Foley’s predecessor, James Kenny, was invited to appear before an all party committee at the tail end of 2005 to discuss the use of Irish airspace by aircraft on missions for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The invitation came against the backdrop of a growing furor at the time surrounding allegations that Shannon airport was being used during the height of the war in Iraq for the so-called CIA “rendition” flights for the movement of prisoners as part of the war against terror.

The invitation to Kenny followed assurances given by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Shannon had never been, and was not, a stopping off point for such flights.

Those assurances, delivered directly to then Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern, failed to quell concern over the issue, however.

Information released to RTE, the Irish national television and radio network, and figures unveiled by Amnesty International, pointed to dozens of CIA flights in and out of Shannon. Whether those flights actually carried prisoners under the “extraordinary rendition” program has never been made absolutely clear.

The flights reportedly involved the movement of terrorism suspects and their transfer to eastern European and Middle Eastern countries for interrogation.

Opponents of the program have claimed that suspects were being tortured under questioning.

The Irish government has repeatedly stated that it accepts U.S. assurances that none of the planes that have passed through Shannon were carrying prisoners. However, it is known that, on at least one occasion, Shannon was used as a refueling stop during a “rendition” operation.

Irish officials maintain that the United States can only use Shannon for transporting prisoners if it first acquires permission from the Irish government. They have stated that were such a request to be made, it would be immediately rejected.

The presence of CIA jets on Irish soil has been well documented by a non-official source: a group of plane-spotters at Shannon. They identified a Gulfstream jet with the call-sign N379P. The plane is known to have used the airport on numerous occasions since 2001. The plane’s registration plate has been changed several times.

Separately, Amnesty International has stated that it had information that prisoners have been moved through the County Clare airport on dozens of flights.

“On Feb. 17, 2003, for instance, the Gulfstream IV, N85VM took Abu Omar from Ramstein (Germany) to Cairo, then turned around and flew to Shannon, arriving at 0552 on the 18th,” Amnesty stated in a report.

The Amnesty claim that Shannon has been used by the CIA reflects similar claims by other rights groups, including Human Rights Watch in New York.

The New York Times, at one point, reported that there had been 33 flights through Ireland “known to be operated by CIA companies” since Sept. 11, 2001.

During their meeting, Secretary Rice told Dermot Ahern that the United States had not used Shannon for prisoner flights.

Ahern said after the meeting that he had told Rice that it would be illegal to transit prisoners for rendition purposes through Shannon.

So will the Irish government indeed raise the issue again, this time with the Obama administration and/or its eventual ambassador? Or will it take Foley’s advice and drop the subject? Time will render the answer, extraordinary or otherwise.