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

Yes. That also relates to participation in courses. It is about trying to drive a priority of getting more women into the Defence Forces and also getting them higher up the scale in the Defence Forces, into positions of influence and so on. We are going to have a head of transformation who in all likelihood will be a woman and that person will also be a civilian. The head of HR will also be a civilian trying to bring in new ideas, new thinking and a fresh approach to how we grapple with these issues. Both of those people will be reporting directly to the Chief of Staff. In other words, that person will be very high up in the command and control structures in the Defence Forces. That will be quite disruptive but I think that disruption is necessary.

Regarding Gormanstown, the Chief of Staff and the team are working on a plan, which has not been finalised yet. It is about trying to increase the capacity significantly for training more people and maintaining very high standards in that training. The way to answer the challenges in the Defence Forces is not to dumb down training or reduce the thresholds that people have to pass to be accepted into the Defence Forces or to be promoted. Instead, it is about building a lot more capacity. In order to do that, we have to build purpose-built facilities and Gormanstown is going to be at the centre of that. Obviously, the Curragh will still be hugely central to everything the Defence Forces do. Three-star training and so on will probably not be in Gormanstown but two-star training certainly will be.

On the difference between something being accepted in principle and accepted, I asked the same question when looking at how we were categorising things. The only difference between those two things is that accepted means the recommendation is accepted for implementation. In other words, we are accepting it and we know how we are going to deliver it. Accepted in principle means that further consideration is required on the optimal approach to meeting the intent of the commission. In other words, we agree it has to be done but we need to do some work on how we actually implement that in the optimal way. That normally means the Defence Forces themselves, if it is a Defence Forces recommendation, have to go away and put a plan together and come back and get approval, or the Department needs to do it if it is the Department's side.

In most cases there is a civil-military team looking at how to implement what we all agree needs to be done but sometimes we need to get external expertise, or even international expertise, to make sure we have a plan that makes sense. There is not really any question about the recommendations. Once we accept something in principle, we are not going back. It is just a question of how we get it done. That is kind of the same for further evaluation or reverting as well. There are not really any recommendations in the commission report, that I can think of, that we do not want to implement. I am not aware of any. It is just a question of being realistic. If I recommend something, the Deputy will rightly ask when it will be done, what it will cost and how I am going to do it. If I do not have those answers, then I cannot put it into the "accepted" box. It has to be categorised as either further evaluation needed, accepted in principle or revert. Once we move something into full acceptance, I need to be able to answer those questions of how, when, with whom and so on.