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

That is helpful. On the 38 early actions, some members will have a copy of Building for the Future - Change from Within, which is the high-level action plan for the report. On pages 16 and 17 are the 38 recommendations for early actions, which in some cases put foundations in place to do more and in others are definitive actions from which people will notice change. We have moved, for example, on the temporary association membership. That is done. On the legislative and policies objective, that process has commenced.

On pay and allowances, which people are very interested in, we have agreement in principle but are still talking to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform about removing the requirement for a three-star private or able seaman to mark time for the first three years of their rank - in other words not getting any pay increases for those three years - and ensuring all personnel, including private three-star and able seaman rank, are paid the full rate of military service allowance, MSA, applicable to that rank. The combination of those two things is worth about €6,000 per year for those impacted, which is approximately 1,500 people. For people looking for immediate and direct benefit from the work of the commission in terms of pay and allowances, there you have it.

For people starting out in the Defence Forces this change to the current system of having to mark time for up to three years and effectively having only half of an MSA payment for a period is worth a significant amount in take-home pay and we hope will be a significant incentive for people to join the Defence Forces and stay there and to retain the kind of people who have, unfortunately, been targeted by the private sector because of their skill sets and capabilities. We have to hold on to those people. That is a practical example of the pay and allowances.

We have committed to providing immediate access to the seagoing service commitment scheme to direct-entry personnel into the Navy. That is a small number of people but an important point of principle. If we bring somebody with the right skill set on a direct-entry scheme into the Naval Service, we want to make sure they can benefit from what everybody else benefits from. We have commenced further evaluation of replacing the existing seagoing allowances with a less complex seagoing duty measure. We want to simplify these payments if we can so that people understand clearly who qualifies and at what level of payment. Work is under way on that.

We are looking at the concept of a long service increment to pay scales for all ranks of enlisted personnel. That is not straightforward because it creates precedents across the public sector more generally. However, we are talking to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform about that and it was focused on in the commission report.

Those are some good examples of what we are looking at, progressing, have agreement in principle on or hopefully will make further progress on between now and the end of the year.

On recruitment strategies, we have commenced measures to enhance the visibility and wider benefits of membership of the Defence Forces in recruitment campaigns. The Be More campaign for the Defence Forces is one of the best recruitment campaigns I have seen in some time but it is in a marketplace of full employment where there is a lot of competition for the skill sets we are looking for. We need to continue to enhance that.

We are looking at recruitment and induction strategies that can deal with the volumes we need to bring into the Defence Forces. For example, we are looking to turn Gormanston into a specialist training centre for new recruits. It would be two-star training, effectively. There is much planning going on within the Defence Forces as to what that might look like but, in simple terms, we must have the capacity to train between 1,000 and 1,200 people per year to get a net increase between 400 and 600 per year, because we will lose people through retirement and other reasons for exit.

That is going to put considerable strain on the Defence Forces. We are looking to design an infrastructure that can facilitate that.

That brings to me a question Deputy Brady asked in respect of allowances for specialised training and instructors. There is a long history around this issue. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has a clear perspective on what was agreed and what was not in previous negotiations. Having said that, I have sympathy for this issue. We need to try to progress it through the commission recommendations. If we are going to put a lot more pressure on the Defence Forces to train more people and maintain high standards, we must put financial incentives in place to ensure we have enough instructors to do that work. That is not going to happen overnight. I spoke to the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers, RACO, about that issue only last week. We will work with RACO to progress something in that space.

The matters of diversity and inclusion strategies have rightly been raised by committee members. There is going to be a post for a full-time, senior-ranked position of gender adviser. That is being progressed as we speak. Gender diversity and unconscious bias training is also being included in the training programmes. Some such elements already exist in the programme and are being enhanced. I compliment the Chief of Staff on strongly pushing this agenda.

One matter that has not been raised but which I am focusing on is the programme for Government commitment to access to private healthcare for enlisted personnel. That must be progressed. It will take some time to work through those issues with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, but at the moment, officers in the Defence Forces have extremely good health cover. It is similar to a VHI-plus package, or however you want to describe it. I would like the same cover to be available to everyone in the Defence Forces, enlisted personnel and officers. The Government has committed to doing that and we hope to make progress next year with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It is not a straightforward thing to do and it is costly. We think it will cost approximately €10 million per year. We would like to make progress in that regard. Quite a lot is being done around that issue.

The issue of the working time directive has been touched on and we are making good progress in that regard. We are trying to finalise the exemptions that will be required for the Defence Forces, which everybody accepts need to be there to ensure the Defence Forces can function in an emergency or in the environment they have to operate in, whether that is overseas, on the deck of a patrol ship or whatever the case may be. We are now approaching the end of that consultation and discussion process between the Chief of Staff, his team, the Department and our team, and the representative bodies to try to get agreement as to where those exemptions should apply. We hope to then be able to frame legislation quite quickly.

The Defence Forces vision statement will be in place by the end of the year.

The high-level command and control is a matter on which we have to revert to the Government. It is a good example of something we absolutely want to do and agree with but cannot pursue until we have legal advice. We want to make our Chief of Staff a chief or head of defence, CHOD. That is the international norm. To create that position, we must also create a defence headquarters. That would mean a change in command structures within the Defence Forces. It would also fundamentally change how the Defence Forces interact with the Department. We need, and are getting, legal advice from the Attorney General on the legalities around that, the legislation that would be required to underpin it and so on. We need that advice before we make a commitment. We are not going to be waiting long. We will have the advice of the Attorney General by the end of this month. That is going to be a good news story for the Defence Forces in terms of that ambition.

The positions of head of transformation and head of human resources, HR, are being advertised externally, and that is progressing. There is a technical issue around the implementation of administrative solutions and how complaints to the ombudsman are sometimes treated because there is a time limit for submissions. Some cases have been timed out and so on. We are considering changes to the legislation, where necessary, in that space.

The Army force design planning process has commenced, which will interest Deputy Berry. This is a complex piece of work for the Defence Forces to undertake and we need to keep politics out of the process, if we can. The issue is where the Army headquarters will be located in the future and how that structure connects with the new CHOD headquarters. That process has started. I expect it to take 18 months to finalise because there is a lot of work involved. As Minister for Defence, I will take advice on the basis of what is good for the military structure in respect of operations and so on. There is a lot of work involved.

In respect of the naval fleet and staffing, we have already engaged with the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA, regarding the consideration of smart metrics for patrol days, which essentially means we need to patrol in a way that is smarter, linking in with both the Air Corps and the Naval Service, which will, of course, become the Air Force and the Irish Navy. Everybody here is familiar with the pressures that the Naval Service, in particular, has been under. That is something I hope we are going to be able to reverse with double crewing, more ships and the better technology that will be coming on stream in the coming years.

Deputy Stanton always asks about the Reserve Defence Force, RDF, and he is right to do so. We have said we will have a regeneration plan by the end of the year. I hope we can meet that target. It may go a little beyond it but not far beyond it. The office for Reserve affairs is being established as we speak and it will be established in the next couple of weeks. We need that office up and running. It will then put in place the RDF regeneration plan. We are effectively putting the pieces in place to make that happen and, as I said, it is to be hoped we will get it done by the end of the year, but if not, it will be done shortly thereafter. It is about getting that right, working with the RDF to do so and ensuring its members are happy.

I am quite strong on the review of Defence Forces tasking. We have significant commitments, for example, to Portlaoise Prison, where there could be up to 50 personnel. They cover approximately 75,000 man days per year, which means, in respect of the required resourcing, it is a bit like a mission overseas but in Portlaoise Prison. While the Defence Forces do a remarkably good job in the prison, we must ask whether we need the Defence Forces there or can find other mechanisms to provide that role without requiring the Defence Forces to be there. We are starting the conversation with the Department of Justice on that issue. We are also having conversations in respect of the Central Bank and Irish Industrial Explosives, both of which have a reliance on the Defence Forces. I want, where possible, to focus the Defence Forces on what its members have signed up to do and trained for, which is defence, security, the protection of sovereignty, overseas missions, and all the other things that are core Defence Force roles, rather than having to supplement other areas because we have a good skill set and experience within the Defence Forces. That work is under way.

The capability development structure is very much under way. The capability development planning process and the permanent structure have already been established. The structure is a civil and military team that are very much working in partnership. I have already come to this committee with new permanent structured co-operation, PESCO, projects that we should be involved in for EU capability development. We are very much pushing ahead with that and have done so already.

With regard to the enhancement of Defence Forces capability, we have commenced planning for military radar capability, including primary radar. The civil-military discussion that is taking place in this area is not just about a primary radar line along our coastline, it is very much around how the Air Corps, the Naval Service and the Army, working together, can provide a much more complete operational picture in terms of radar capability and technology.

I wished to give a sense that there were some cynics who said this commission report would be another report that sits on the shelf, on the back of which nothing would really happen. However, a tonne of stuff is happening on the back of that report. We only approved it at the very end of July. The month of August is a quiet time for actions but, in the month of August and September, all of this stuff has been progressing at a pace that I have certainly never seen in the defence sector before and with a partnership between the Defence Forces and the Department which is really strong. We have much to do between now and the end of the year and we will then move on to all of the other recommendations as well. I suspect we will implement virtually all of the 130 recommendations, but some need more work before we can finalise that and some will probably need a new Government decision to move ahead.