Volunteer army reservists would be used to protect important places such as Schiphol airport and Amsterdam Centraal station if there were a terror attack in the Netherlands, the defence department has said.

Following a report to this effect in the AD newspaper on Friday morning, it confirmed the plans to the NOS broadcaster.

Currently, regular and border control police work with the army if needed, but the department said that if they were needed for other work then volunteers would be asked to fill in.

‘We want to use reservists more for this because guarding and securing [places] is what they specialise in,’ Lieutenant Colonel André van Wijk told the broadcaster.

By 2022, the government wants to have nine groups of 30 reservists for these kinds of tasks. It has spaces for 6,000 volunteers, according to its website.

The idea was outlined by junior defence minister Barbara Visser called for more people to sign up last month to make the defence service more flexible, while giving people valuable ‘experience’ for the corporate world.