Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the committee, I thank the witnesses for their presentation and attendance today. They have painted a very bleak picture of the situation at all ranks in our Permanent Defence Forces. They referred to very low morale and raised questions regarding the well-being of officers, soldiers, sailors and aircrews. They also spoke about the loss of corporate knowledge, expertise and experience which is an enormous blow to our Permanent Defence Forces. The Government will have to take action to deal with this unprecedented retention crisis to which the witnesses referred a number of times. For the sake of the country, we cannot have a completely demoralised Defence Forces. It is disappointing to learn about an obsession on the part of the Department with control and micromanagement. We will put those issues to the Department and Minister of State in our next engagement. We will follow that up. I heard a former Army officer comment on broadcast media in recent days that when a memo goes to Government, there is very little input from the military side. It is a Department of Defence memo rather than a major contribution being made by the military. That comment was made by a retired senior officer and, if true, it is disappointing. For the sake of our society, we need our Permanent Defence Forces to be properly and strongly resourced. Often at this committee, we refer to the great service provided by our Permanent Defence Forces. Given where I come from, I am very conscious of the subversion that existed on our island over a period of 30 years-----