Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

I thank Deputy Brady and Senator Craughwell for their questions. The Senator raised quite a few issues and he raised many more in his submission, which I have read. He was being mild on me for which I thank him.

I will first deal with Deputy Brady's points. As I mentioned earlier, we have broken the work into a number of subgroups and among the issues the staffing subgroup is investigating is the area of contracts. Obviously, the prism through which it is looking at this is in part the question of turnover in the Defence Forces and the desire for retention. The Deputy specifically mentioned technical grades. In both our visits to Cathal Brugha Barracks and to the Air Corps, the specific challenges of technical staff were raised very strongly with us and so we are becoming better informed on that. I cannot tell the Deputy what we will conclude on these things. I think both will feature in the final report, but I cannot tell him the extent to which they will feature. They are on our list of matters we are investigating.

The Deputy also asked about ICTU. This is obviously a tricky subject and I do not want to get too far into it. We will keep ourselves informed of developments over the next few months because this is obviously a live issue at the moment involving PDFORRA. There are also legal issues. We will keep an eye on it. Towards the end of our work, we might make a call on whether it would be appropriate or useful for us to make some comment in this area. I will be realistic. There are a number of representative associations. They do not all have precisely the same view and we need to respect that. We will not shy away from the matter, however, if we think we need to address it.

I will now deal with Senator Craughwell's questions. The land component is very important and I understand his point on the geographical distribution. We have not had a particular look at geographical distribution yet. I will probably be hung by my fellow commission members for saying this, but it would be our broad intention to visit all the locations if we can, at which point we might have a better view on this.

Obviously, the importance of the distribution of facilities to recruitment has been raised with us. On the other hand, however, the difficulty of having a very dispersed force in the context of causes for career progression has also been raised. I hate to proceed by means of anecdote but nevertheless I will do so. One member of the Defence Forces spoke to me about how his career had stalled. He felt he was stuck in his initial location because he had his house close by where he and his family were living. He said there were not too many senior NCO positions at that location. Obviously, concentration provides individuals with greater promotion opportunities; dispersal provides greater recruitment opportunities. It is not an easy issue, but we will think about that as we go through those issues.

The Senator and Deputy Brady both talked about the Reserve. The Senator spoke about his experience in the distant past when he was young; I am sure it is not that long ago. It is a long time since I was in the FCA, although I have to say we were not hanging around corners as apparently they were doing in Galway. We were very disciplined. The Reserve is very important. I will try not to repeat what I said in my opening statement. We are trying to deal with the Reserve in the three big buckets first. The Reserve needs to be looked at in totality with the Permanent Defence Force in those areas. However, we are very conscious of the need for specific attention to be paid to the Reserve. I am well aware of the current state of the Reserve. I will not go further than that.

Diversity is very important. Let me first talk about gender diversity. Only about 7% of the members of the Defence Forces are women. As I have said a number of times at meetings with Defence Forces colleagues, we are effectively recruiting from half the population and then worrying about problems with recruitment. There is a big issue here. It is not exclusive to the Irish Defence Forces. I have been looking at defence forces in other countries and while some of them are better, quite a few of them struggled with this. I compliment the Chief of Staff on this. I used to have responsibility in the Civil Service at Secretary General level for promoting gender balance in the Civil Service. That expanded to the public service at one stage and I worked closely with the Chief of Staff on it. I know of his personal commitment to gender balance and diversity, but a considerable amount remains to be done. The story in the past week of the Rastafarian recruit to the Naval Service was very heart-warming. I hope we can see more of that.

The issue of giving people citizenship was raised. I am sure that the Chairman, Deputy Stanton and I would be delighted to pass that one back to the Department of Justice. I am sure they would forgive us.

The issue of training locations for six-month courses was again raised with us. Many things cause strains in respect of having a family-friendly approach and two things have been called out to us in particular. The first relates to the requirement for Defence Forces members to participate in a six-month course in the Curragh or wherever, when they may be living with their family in Cork, Finner or elsewhere. The second issue relates to overseas service, which again requires stepping away for the duration of the deployment. These are significant challenges. We will be looking carefully at the training systems involved in promotion because they put multiple strains on the individuals who have to go off on these courses and also on the Defence Forces in providing these courses. I do not have solutions at this point, but we are aware of the issue.

The issue of an Air Corps contract relating to search and rescue will be dealt with by the time we report and, therefore, will have resolved itself one way or another. I know that search and rescue is specifically mentioned among the 11 roles of the Defence Forces set out in the 2015 White Paper on Defence.

The Senator raised a broad issue that I have been thinking about recently. On the one side there is the pull to the core military duties of the Defence Forces and on the other side a pull to using its capabilities in a way that benefits the people of the country generally in what we call aid to the civil authority, including search and rescue. That tension is a big issue and the Senator is quite right to point it out. We are thinking about it and, certainly, I am thinking about it. It seems to be a very present and real issue. I will leave it there. I have tried to answer as far as I can. I again apologise for not being able to indicate any conclusions or anything like that.