Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. The total number of active Civil Defence volunteers as of today is 2,793. The total budget for Civil Defence from the Department in 2021 is €5.64 million. This includes €1 million from the dormant accounts fund, which is used to upgrade the Civil Defence fleet. This allocation will ensure the Civil Defence continues to perform its core function of supporting the principal response agencies, as set out in the Civil Defence - Towards 2030 policy, which was launched last year. We continue to support the Civil Defence and it is playing a significant role again this year in the voluntary work it does. Our funding is primarily about ensuring it gets the right equipment and training to be able to do the job and we remain strongly supportive of the work it does.

Climate action is important across all aspects of Government now, even in defence. If we look at what we are doing here, we are investing in the energy proofing of our buildings and we have a significant number of buildings. Improving energy efficiency and the energy management of our portfolio of buildings is important. We use electric vehicles where possible but there are some vehicles for which this does not work. We are not likely to have an electric Mowag any time soon. This does not mean that in terms of many of the transportation vehicles we cannot look at more emissions-efficient vehicles. We are also using green energy where possible. This will be factored into procurement discussions and choices, as it will for every Department.

With regard to communications and information technology, the outturn for last year was a lot higher than this year's Estimate. I am told that if the outturn this year is higher than the Estimate as it was last year then we will spend more money as needed. When we look at the list of areas where we are spending money, including computer and data preparation, equipment, printing, photocopying, signal equipment and maintenance and telecommunications services, they are in contract cycles so we will sometimes have higher expenditure and sometimes lower expenditure. I assure the Deputy, and I have been very clear with the chair of the Commission on the Future of the Defence Forces on this, that I expect it to look in a very serious way at cybersecurity as one of the key priorities in future planning for the Defence Forces, in terms of their own systems and contributing to the national challenges on this. I do not think money or funding will be a problem in terms of this issue. The challenges will be skill sets and recruitment. The Deputy can take from me that the actual hardware and equipment and the housing of those personnel will not be a problem. It is about the skill sets. We already have many skilled people in the Defence Forces but we probably need more. Believe me, there is a lot of competition for people who are talented and educated in this area.

On the compensation issue-----