Mr. Shane Keogh:

We have been talking about how loyal the officers of the Defence Forces are. Cathal Berry was mentioned earlier on and he had to leave because he could not do anything internally and that is a strange dichotomy. What is happening on the ground is that there are many gaps at officer level for the reasons to which Mr. King has alluded. The establishment for overseas personnel and the number of people in training are not catered for within the unit strengths so there are day to day gaps in every unit in the Defence Forces.

The net effect of that is that those who remain there are carrying the extra burden. They are well trained, they that take that task on well and the young officers out there are doing a fantastic job but they can only do so much. One job can be done well and two jobs can be done but when one gets a third job and a fourth job, it is hard to keep up. That leaves huge issues with governance and it leaves significant issues with risk. The difficulty is that the risk lies on the shoulders of those young officers and the NCOs. That frustration has come home to roost with the numbers leaving the Defence Forces. I hope that can paint some picture of governance and risk at the unit level, which is what it is really about because they are at the true coalface of our organisation.