Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Guinan and his team. I also wish to convey my sincere sympathies to the Bright family. I ask the witnesses to convey to their members the huge amount of appreciation and gratitude we have for all their hard work, particularly over the last 15 months on the pandemic and in the last few weeks in respect of the cyberattack. The country would be lost without them. I also thank the witnesses for their detailed opening statement. It makes quite rough reading, to be honest.

I will focus on one key point mentioned, which is very honest, blunt and frank. It is about the Naval Service. The witness said that the net result is the inability of State ships to go to sea, and in some instances vessels worth tens of millions of euro are idle due to the lack of appropriately trained staff. That is a sad indictment of the position of the Naval Service. There is a ministerial and departmental responsibility for this, but there is also a responsibility on this committee. We are the parliamentary oversight committee and this is occurring on our watch. Our job is to forensically analyse the performance of the defence apparatus in this country. I do not take my responsibilities lightly in this regard and it is something on which we should focus. Our job as a cross-governmental, inter-party committee is to put forward solutions. My question to Mr. Keane or Mr. Guinan is: how do we solve the Naval Service issue? Mr. Keane articulated the dual-tier pay system in the Naval Service. One must have three years service in the Naval Service before one is eligible to apply for the sea-going service commitment scheme. What if that caveat were removed? If every member of the Naval Service were entitled to at least apply for the sea-going commitment scheme, would that make a difference from a retention point of view? That is the first question.

My second question is probably for Mr. Guinan and relates to his comment about lack of movement on technician pay. I was following Twitter last night and I noticed the Minister issued a statement. I believe there might have been considerable movement in the last 24 hours. The timing before this meeting today is, I presume, totally coincidental, but we will take whatever is going. Perhaps Mr. Guinan would outline to the committee what the current position is with that issue. Does he have confidence? We have had announcements in this regard in the past, so is he confident that the announcement will be delivered on this time, unlike two years ago when it was announced initially?

I will leave it at that in the interests of brevity for the first round. I will be happy to hear from PDFORRA.