Mr. Conor King:

I thank Deputies Jack Chambers and McLoughlin. I will start at the beginning and take the questions of Deputy Chambers first. He asked what retention initiatives we would bring in. We have been speaking about various retention initiatives with the Department of Defence and the official side in general for many years. We feel we are not being heard. We are fully aware that the Public Service Pay Commission is engaged in ongoing work. It is a specific pay commission identified to address the appalling rates of pay in the Defence Forces. The leaks that came out about what was proposed were extremely concerning. Until we see the final document we cannot know for certain but what I will say is the reported 10% increase in military service allowance for the most junior private equates to less than €1 a day gross and for a captain it equates to €1.29 per day gross. Such increases will not arrest the slide. I call on the committee to influence, if possible, the Public Service Pay Commission to have another look at how it will fix the problems in the Defence Forces.

Defence Forces members receive a unique set of allowances separate from the rest of the public sector. These take into account members' unlimited liability, unwillingness to strike or withdraw labour, their posting 24-7, 365 days a year, their exposure to danger and the fact that they are not protected under the working time directive. It is easy to separate these. As well as the military service allowance, there is the potential to increase allowances such as the patrol duty allowance for the Naval Service. As I said, the turnover rate in the Naval Service is 14%. There is also the security allowance and the return of premium payments for Saturday and Sunday duties, which was taken away during the financial crash. The crash is over. There are other various allowances, all of which were included by RACO in our detailed submission to the Public Service Pay Commission.

With regard to what else we could talk about with regard to retention initiatives, it is not just about remuneration. There are fundamental organisational structural issues within the Defence Forces, such as training establishments. Before the reorganisation, we had 500 personnel training establishments that gave a small bit of fat when we wanted to do induction training and we did not count this figure in our overall strength. This is no longer the case. We could do with a junior officer overseas establishment because when people go overseas their job is not filled at home and someone has to double job. It is the same for non-commissioned officers. We could do with having a transparent and accurate posting and human resource management policy for officers and NCOs. The most fundamental retention issue, and one we have been pursuing since 2011, although the Department has only started to speak to us about this in the past two years, is the working time directive, whose protections have been illegally denied to members of the Defence Forces. These are the retention issues I will mention for now.

Something else I mentioned in my opening statement was the return of fixed period promotion. It is a fallacy that we can recruit qualified highly specialised technical officers and non-commissioned officers and expect them to be up to speed immediately. We spoke about the fact that it costs €1.7 million for a pilot and €1.5 million for an ordinance officer. These are the people on whom the State depends for its security. The fact that fixed period promotion was so enthusiastically removed by the Department of Defence beggars belief. It galls and upsets me to see friends, colleagues and cadet classmates of mine whom I trained with, and who joined the ordnance corps with a view to adding value to the State, found they were unable to maintain a work-life balance and their service to the Defence Forces because of failed Department of Defence policies.

With regard to the future of representation, in the opening statement we mentioned that our representative status had been taken advantage of by the Department of Defence. Its dismissive and divisive attitude to representation means we have effectively been neutered. When we go into pay talks we are outside the room. The decisions are already made and the deals have already been done. In the UK, the armed forces do not go into public service pay talks. It has a standing armed forces pay review body that recognises the unique nature of military service. It recognises the civil liberties that are given up and the facts that members have unlimited liability, exposure to hazard and danger and can be posted anywhere at any time for any duration at short notice, away from their families and loved ones. What the standing armed forces pay review body does is look at the pay and if there are gaps in the allowances and pay, it tweaks them immediately. There have been more than 43 reports since the inception of the armed forces pay review body. It is reactive and it works. Having such a body would mean Defence Forces representative associations would not have to go into public service pay talks and act like unions because that is not in our ethos or culture. We just want to be looked after by the State because we provide loyalty to the State.

We were asked why we described the White Paper as a box-ticking exercise. The White Paper is from 2015 and we are now in 2019. It includes 88 projects and actions. Every time we look for a brief on the White Paper from the Department of Defence, we come away frustrated and none the wiser about what is going on. It would be funny if it were not so serious. Five items listed by the Department of Defence as being transitioned to normal business and completed as White Paper projects were read out in the Dáil last year.

They were Civil Defence, an employment support scheme, Red Cross, a major emergency management framework and civilian employees but none of these has any tangible effect on the retention crisis in the Defence Forces. That is why I say it is a White Paper box-ticking exercise. We have asked several times for specific briefings on retention projects from the White Paper but we have been met with silence.

The strength figures were mentioned. The Dáil was told that the current strength of the Defence Forces stood at 93% and that may be the case on paper, and under the personnel management system. It does not, however, take into account the fact that more than 500 personnel are on induction training at all times and are non-deployable. They cannot be legally given a rifle and told to go on an operation or an exercise. The figure does not account for the fact that there are more than 670 people overseas or that over 100 are on leave of absence at any given time. It also fails to account for the fact that at least 100 are on long-term detachments and on career courses, etc., which means they are not available to their units. These figures give a misleading representation of the current state of play in the Defence Forces. It may be reported that officer strength is 92% or 93% but we have to remember that at least 300 of the officers have only been commissioned in the past three years, because of the unprecedented panic in the recruitment that has taken place in the cadet school, which is stressed to the point of breaking. The figures paint an inaccurate picture of the strength of the Defence Forces.

The Deputy asked about the emergency air medical service. It would be remiss of me to comment on operational issues as they are matters for general staff and military management but the Air Corps is under severe stress at the moment. The current strength of pilots in the Air Corps stands at 70% and it is falling. The air traffic control office stands at 66% while NCOs are at 50%. It was reported recently that aircraft technicians in the helicopter wing of the Irish Air Corps were at 44%, with pilots at 59%. The man on the street can tell members that the organisation is under pressure and the service it provides must also be under pressure and under strain.

Governance is a serious concern of ours. Historically, governance at unit level was enshrined, particularly from the logistics side of the house, by a captain quartermaster, or a battalion or company quartermaster sergeant, with dedicated store staff who worked in the stream from the beginning of their careers. We have spoken to subject matter experts around the country and we have spoken to logistics experts in the Defence Forces. They have seen newly commissioned officers, such as second lieutenants who do not have the experience or the qualifications to fill the role of captain quartermaster, doing the job with no senior enlisted leadership, such as a company quartermaster sergeant or a battalion quartermaster sergeant, in the unit to mentor or supervise them. It is rare to see the same officer or NCO in a logistics appointment for a full year. We visited a unit in February this year and learned that there was one captain out of eight in the unit in the middle management ranks. The logistics officer would normally be a captain of 15 years' experience but the job was being done by a second lieutenant.

Something has to give. We are seeing little accidents, the nature of which I will not go into, and we expect more unless something changes. It is due to a shortage of officers in the middle ranks. The majority of officers who are leaving are, ironically, from middle and upper management and this means captains are promoted to commandant more quickly. That may be a good thing but it is leaving gaps at the rank of captain. We are constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul and this is resulting in a loss of corporate knowledge of how the Defence Forces conduct their business. A significant number of young officers are coming under high levels of stress due to the organisational need to put responsibilities they are not equipped to deal with on their young shoulders. They do not have the mentoring or supervision to guide them or hold them by the hand. The execution of lethal force is a serious matter and a second lieutenant doing a captain's job is dangerous. I hope I have painted a clear enough picture for members. Have I answered all the questions?