Mr. Se?n Clancy:

I thank the members for all their questions. There are some very far-reaching ones there. I am conscious that some of them came up in my previous engagement also. A number of members commented on the ongoing operation. Just to reiterate that this was a joint operation in terms of the Defence Forces and the assets we employed on it - it is ongoing - but also joint in terms of the cross-government agencies and multi-agency approach that was being developed over a number of weeks, the culmination of which we have seen today. Deputy Stanton's comments in particular are quite right and relevant. Sometimes we lose sight of the raison d'êtreof the Defence Forces in the complexity of everything we do. I thank him for his comments. They are noted and appreciated.

With regard to recruitment and across a couple of different themes from the first questions to the latter questions from the Senator, we have a very proactive recruitment strategy and engagement. As I mentioned in my opening comments, we have a head of strategic HR who has just been appointed. He is in the office three weeks.

I am very hopeful and confident about what he brings to the table.

With regard to our overall recruitment, we have the joint induction training centre. This is a centre of excellence through which we sustain at the very initial stages the recruits who come to us and introduce them to the organisation. This gives us a capacity that we hope to increase over a three-year period to 900 recruits per year. It went to initial operation capability only in April. It is an initiative that I posited and developed as one of my priorities to bring governance and excellence to those who join us and whom we train. They expect it and we expect it of them. This is the way forward. Growing the capacity for recruitment at this point in time is important for us.

I do not accept that the recruitment process is broken. We are constantly evolving and changing our recruitment process. We are aware of the barriers to recruitment in our organisation and we have been examining them. To answer one of the questions with regard to female-specific recruitment, we have taken a very broad approach to the fitness level, and this has been mentioned. We have looked at our standards and what we expect people to pass on entry. We have changed from a pass or fail system to a red, amber and green system. We have re-examined the female specific milestones that have to be achieved. In this new approach that we have taken and adapted “green” means those people who meet the standard, “amber” means those people who get within a certain limit of the standard and we have confidence that we can get them to the standard when they join us, and “red” means those people we feel will not meet the standard and we will not be able to get them to the standard in the training environment in the timeframe applied.

With the psychometric testing we have taken a very positive approach to allowing IT infrastructure to enable psychometric testing to happen when people come into barracks. We have people to help them, supervise them, encourage them and enable them to do it, in so far as is practicable. Deputy Stanton said that psychometric testing is sometimes the first engagement with the Defence Forces but it is not. There is a direct contact reply within 48 hours to every expression of interest we receive. Despite this, we still have the figures that have been mentioned. Whether or not people intend to continue with the process we engage within 48 hours. This is the general level of ambition I have set in HR. This is a new initiative that has been put in place to ensure we are very proactive in trying to get to the level that has been set.

As a matter of interest, the general expected yield of inductees, not only in the Defence Forces in Ireland but in European militaries and wider afield, is in the order of 10% to 12% of applicants from initial expression of interest. The total number of inductees includes cadets and direct entry. The general service recruitment numbers that Deputy Carthy mentioned are only the general service recruitment numbers. The total number is between 400 and 425. During my previous engagement here I mentioned that the most important thing right now is to close the gap between those whom we are not retaining and those we are recruiting into the organisation. We are on the road to this. The Naval Service numbers indicate this very positively for 2023 alone.

With regard to female recruitment, the average throughout European militaries is 7%. There are numbers below this and, as has been mentioned, the figure is as high as 11.5% in the UK and higher in other militaries. We are at 7.1% or 7.2%. My understanding is that this is the average throughout Europe. The ambition and target I have set this year is for 9% female intake. As Deputy Carthy rightly pointed out, the numbers indicate that it is not increasing significantly more widely in the organisation. Increasing the recruitment numbers will not have the same impact on the totality of the numbers in the organisation because they will increase at a slower rate. This is the point at which we can increase the numbers. The level of ambition set by the Commission on the Defence Forces was 35%. I said in my previous engagement here that this was a very ambitious number but we have to start the process. This is how we plan to do so. I am very confident that we will reach the target in 2023, which is the first full year of the initiative.

We had a female-specific recruitment initiative. We have put in place a recruitment team that is getting up off the ground. It comprises a captain, an NCO and a private. As part of the female-specific strategy it is targeting regional-level events and engagement. These are some of the initiatives we have put in place to try to meet our overall aim of giving people the career opportunity to be more in the Defence Forces and to communicate this, as has been rightly pointed out, in the wider community in the organisation as a whole.

These are some of the areas in the recruitment process where we have ongoing work. On foot of this and the initiative of the Secretary General, and in consultation with her, an outside group will come in to validate our recruitment processes as they stand to help us understand whether there are other areas that we can improve. We are open to this engagement. We are open to seeing where we can constantly improve and constantly change what we are doing. This will take place very shortly and will be done in short order.