Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

He is an excellent civil servant, as are all the civil servants in my Department. They come in for criticism on occasion. I will defend every one of my civil servants to the bitter end. They are absolutely outstanding public servants. I appreciate the work they do every day for the improvement and promotion of the Defence Forces. I know that message might not always come through. Of course, they have responsibilities and on occasion they have to question Defence Forces pay, but that is the very same with An Garda Síochána and everybody else.

I was very supportive of a new assistant secretary in the Department because European policy has become incredibly complex in recent years. The previous assistant secretary was looking after HR, European policy, all foreign policy and everything like that and simply could not do it all. When the proposal was made to me, I was strongly in favour of doing that and giving more support to the Defence Forces. They should see that with the addition of an assistant secretary they now have more support. There is not as much pressure on the person who was carrying out that role previously.

In response to Senator Craughwell, I have dealt with the pay commission and I do not want to rehearse what I said. The Senator spoke about the Chief of Staff looking for face time with the pay commission. I do not think it was the Chief of Staff but members of the Defence Forces senior military management who sought that. Before he even said that on television, I had already requested that there be face-to-face contact between the pay commission, senior military management and the Department. They could then go through the submission we made line by line. This has been a joint submission, signed off by Mr. Mooney and agreed by both the Defence Forces military management and the civil side.

I do not want to repeat myself, but I will say one thing. The amount of work that went into this submission in June, July and August was immense. People on both the military side and the civil side worked long hours and curtailed their holidays to get this submission in by the first week in September. As in any organisation, give and take are required, involving back-and-forth negotiation. I am happy with the submission that was made to the pay commission. There is already contact between the pay commission and the Defence Forces. They will have contact with-----