Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and note that he stuck rigidly to my exhortation that he stay with the subject matter of the Supplementary Estimate. I welcome that it is a Supplementary Estimate, not the reallocation of funding for the capital programme to fund the shortfall in pensions that has been a recurring feature of the past few years.

The Minister of State mentioned the loss of many highly qualified skilled people who had not reached retirement age. Unfortunately, there are many well qualified, committed former members of the Permanent Defence Forces who I think should still be serving. I know some of them very well and they left because they are not satisfied with the conditions and the morale within the Army. Recruitment, which the Minister of State mentioned in his contribution, needs to be addressed but retention also needs to be addressed.

I gather from some of the low-ranking members of the Permanent Defence Force, PDF, that the availability of the disability pension is not widely known with the Defence Forces. It was suggested to me that it is very well known and availed of by higher ranking officers who had retired, but the lower ranking ones did not seem to be so well acquainted with their entitlements. Could the Minister of State arrange for the Department to ensure that people are fully aware of their entitlements?

We need policies to be put in place and measures to be taken to retain members of the Permanent Defence Force because we all want to see enlistment at required levels.

Today, the subject is the Supplementary Estimate and as we have a time constraint, I will allow very little tolerance for veering away from the Supplementary Estimate. However, a request has been sent to the Minister of State to engage with us on general Defence Forces matters in January. He will be here next week for statements on the European defence policy but in January we hope to devote a full meeting to Defence Forces matters, where a dialogue will be very important.