Mr. Conor King:

Deputy McLoughlin is correct that the officer strength in Finner Camp has consistently been low in the past number of years. The last time I was there, there was one commandant out of five. The "strength in station" is the strength available to a unit commander to exercise his operations or the unit's daily duties. We see five officers out of 25 in some infantry battalions, we see a transport group with six out of 24 and we see an ordnance company, which is responsible for bomb disposal, at 16% of their officers. The figures are stark.

We work hard on education and training. We train for what we can predict and we educate for those things we cannot predict. We provide good education and training opportunities for our personnel, whom we accredit accordingly. We train people to the best of our ability and enable them to leave with good qualifications but we should be treating them as though we want them to stay, and we are not doing that. I do not have the rates of pay for the Defence Forces to hand but a recruit starts on €19,000 gross, graduating to €29,000. After 12 years, a private soldier will be on €37,000. Officers start at €35,000, once commissioned, and that goes all the way up to €65,000 or €70,000 for the most senior commandant. Some 87% of the Defence Forces are on below the average public sector wage. There are opportunities for promotion and, ironically, shortages in middle management mean vacancies crop up on a regular basis. In the Air Corps, we currently have more vacancies than we have people qualified, such is the level of brain drain in the Air Corps. We cannot fill lieutenant colonel vacancies because we do not have people qualified to fill them.

There was a question about privates transitioning to commissioned life. Privates get a 6% increase in an interview process to recognise previous military service and we welcome the fact that a private soldier or non-commissioned officer wants to become an officer.