Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his opening statement, and the Department officials are very welcome.

I have three observations on Vote 35. On page 3 of the Minister's opening statement, we see that 12,890 people are in receipt of Army pensions. That is a massive number. My observation is that there are 50% more people on military pensions than are actually serving in the Defence Forces. It just shows how small our Defence Forces complement has become.

The other statement the Minister made was, "and their numbers continue to rise year on year". That is an accurate statement. It shows the importance of retention and stopping that haemorrhage of people. When people hit 50 or 60 years of age, they have to retire but there are many people retiring before that age. The actuarial problem here is that not only are you paying the military pension of the people who retire but you are paying the military salary for their replacements as well. I want to place the emphasis on it being important that we try to retain people in the organisation.

My final observations is that there is €271 million for pensions. A quarter of the entire defence budget is going towards military pensions. The only thing I want to emphasise there is that retention is essential. If we can keep these highly-skilled, highly-motivated, highly-professional people in the organisation, it will save money in the long run.