Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have active recruitment campaigns under way all the time. There may be lots of people who want to join but that does not mean that they meet the standards.

For example, we have a really active recruitment effort to recruit more women to the Defence Forces. Only 6.2% of the Defence Forces are women. That is not acceptable to me in a modern defence force infrastructure and with many of the things we want to do under the White Paper. We need far more gender balance in the Defence Forces. There are clear challenges. It just so happens there have been real challenges in terms of fitness tests and so on for women who are looking to join the Defence Forces. We need to look at how we deal with that without reducing standards and so on. The current figure is 558 women in the Defence Forces but I want to see this figure doubled. There are people who want to join the Defence Forces but the Deputy would be surprised in that something like one in three people who get called for interview do not even turn up.