Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the suggestion about engagement. It would be good to have regular formal engagement at this committee as an accountability structure for the Department on many of the issues Commandant King outlined to enable a proper public airing of them. When we raise these issues on the floor of the Dáil, sometimes the Minister of State just reads a departmental memo. To provide some truth and context, perhaps it is important we have the witnesses here more regularly rather than hearing the nonsense from him.

Regarding the issue of morale, how do the association's members feel when other front-line public servants such as the gardaí got a €55 million bounce and nurses got a €35 million pay supplement while the members of RACO and PDFORRA are not even allowed attend oversight committees? How do the members of RACO feel about being treated as the worst-paid public servants and about being put outside the room and denigrated in that way when others are getting their pay issues addressed? Will Commandant King comment on the morale of the association's members in that respect and the choreography of it where some people can get some of their issues addressed because they can threaten with their right to strike and the fact that Defence Forces personnel cannot do that and this aspect has been used and abused on the pay issue?

With respect to the Air Corps, does Commandant King consider a single agency should be established? Some of the previous functions provided by the Air Corps have been removed, undermined and split up.

What is Commandant King's view of the fact that all the military advice and the recommendations included in the pay commission were stripped out and removed by the Department of Defence? How do the association's members feel about the fact that all the recommendations around pay were butchered by the Civil Service? Also, the parent joint submission was further butchered by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, which was confirmed by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe. That is the reason the alarming leaks are not so surprising when no case has been presented by the civil servants.