Mr. Neil Richardson:

I will answer Deputy Clarke's first question along with Deputy Brady's third. They are quite thematically similar. I will answer the question of how important is the geographical expansion. I will take a geographical area with which I am familiar, namely, the Longford-Roscommon area. Prior to 2012, there was a Reserve training centre in Roscommon town and Connolly Barracks was in Longford. That would have allowed reservists or people who were interested in joining the Reserve in those two counties to have a central point where they could come to be trained and to engage with the organisation. They were subsequently closed. County Longford, as Deputy Brady said was true of County Wicklow, no longer has a Reserve training centre at all. We could go through other counties, including Laois and Offaly, where there simply is not a Reserve presence anymore.

How important is that contraction of the Reserve? It disincentivises interested parties in those regions from joining the Reserve. If people in the Longford-Roscommon area have an interest in joining the Reserve, their closest centre might be in Mullingar, Athlone town or Boyle in north County Roscommon. That might be quite a distance to travel for a young individual who might find it hard to get there. I am not even talking about younger individuals who might not have their own form of transport but serving reservists who are now being told there is an ancillary travel cost associated with attending for training. That training is often voluntary or free. A person is being told that instead of a journey of a couple of miles, perhaps walking distance to a training centre or local barracks, he or she now has to put a certain amount of fuel into the car, at their personal cost, to attend a training event for which they are not paid. Service in the Reserve now comes at a net cost. Quite a lot of reservists over recent years have simply weighed up whether it is economically feasible for them to remain serving and decided it is not. That is where some of the loss of members has come from.

Providing a centre, at least one per county, gives local reservists or local interested applicants an opportunity to serve locally. It facilitates that level of engagement. If we shut down Reserve training centres, so they are few and far between throughout the State, we can look into that situation and see exactly why reservists stop turning up. Attendance comes at a net cost to reservists.