Mr. Neil Richardson:

On recruitment, the Minister has said it needs to be a vigorous process and we support that. The testing should be the same as for members of the Permanent Defence Force; we wholeheartedly agree with that. There is interest out there in joining the Reserve Defence Force but the message is simply not reaching the people who might wish to join. Our suggestion is that a national campaign might be more effective than the type of localised campaign that has been pursued until now. If the advertising budget were spent on a national television and radio campaign, as well as on social media and new media campaigns, as opposed to placing advertisements in local newspapers where they might not necessarily be accessed by young people, it might lead to a serious increase in uptake.

We are hearing talk at present of the upper ceiling for enlistment being dropped from 35 to 25 years. If we are trying to recruit qualified professionals and specialists to the Reserve, we should bear in mind that it will be particularly difficult to get people with any serious amount of experience in any sector at age 24 or 25. As such, we would like to see the ceiling retained at age 35. In the British Army, to give a comparison, our cousins across the water hire some specialist personnel up to the age of 60.

One aspect of recruitment about which we have serious concerns relates to Garda vetting and the process whereby applicants have to fill out a form and send it off for processing and approval before they are eligible for recruitment to the Reserve. In some instances, it is taking nine or ten months for those forms to be processed and returned, by which time the Garda clearance is void. There are dedicated citizens who want to join the Reserve but who are being turned away because their Garda vetting forms were not processed on time. This issue affected some 100 applicants this year, which is a serious chunk of our recruitment. It is an issue we would like to see addressed. The main point I would like members to take away regarding recruitment is that the budget probably does need to be redirected into something more national rather than having local campaigns which may not be connecting with young people.

I ask my colleague, Mr. Mulligan, to deal with the question of the definition of a crisis situation.