Mr. Martin Cooney:

Regarding employment protection, we recently conducted a survey to which 75% of respondents indicated they would not be able to serve overseas without employment protection. How can you leave your paid employment for the period in question and not have protection ensuring you can return to it afterwards? The Department took the view that it would go softly-softly on this, engage with employers’ representative bodies and have many nice talks about being nice to employees, and then come up with a policy to the effect that employers could let employees go to serve if they wanted but that they would not be compelled to let them go. This implies another policy that is a waste of time, as with many things we see produced regarding the Reserve.

We took the initiative about eight years ago and drafted a Bill. We believed it was a first sensible step to promote employment protection. In that Bill, we sought to achieve a few very simple things. Number one was the prevention of discrimination entering, during and exiting employment. The grounds were to be similar to those concerning disability, race, sex and religious orientation under employment equality legislation and so on. We said we would just add in “being a member of the Reserve” so that if a member's employer were compelled to release them for a period of training, it would not stand against them.

The second thing we did was introduce an entitlement to a period of unpaid leave from work. Looking at what has happened with parental leave and other trends regarding the kind of protection in question, we did not say to employers that we were going to compel them to pay the individuals for nine or ten months; we just added in additional leave for a number of weeks a year to allow reservists to train on the island, bearing in mind that eight years ago we were not allowed to officially leave the island to train or go north on this island to do so. The North was considered another jurisdiction, so we were not allowed to go over the Border to train with colleagues or professionals from the British military. Therefore, we had to get amending legislation in 2021 to allow us to go even over the Border or to Brussels in the EU. It was 2021 before we could participate in anything that meant crossing a border. I am referring to an organisation that in 2013 was reorganised supposedly to make it more professional, but I agree with Senator Craughwell that it was a death knell.

Moving on to opportunities for promotion, it is very frustrating for a volunteer. The way to get recognition for service is through gaining qualifications, peer recognition from Permanent Defence Force and Reserve colleagues, and promotion opportunities that give a chance to advance. It is extremely hard to advance when the structure is set up in such a way that does not encourage it in any way, shape or form. I will give the example of the lieutenant-to-captain promotion competition, which has been sanctioned on a once-off basis. Over two years ago, the Minister gave a commitment. We were at the meeting where he gave a direction that a promotion competition was to happen immediately. The last one before that was in 2014 or 2015. There were arguments that there was no legislative provision for the competition because Defence Forces Regulation R5 did not cover it, but in any event, funnily enough, a routine order was prepared. The competition is now going to be run but it is still facing difficulties. It will be run in circumstances in which we know there is not a sufficient number of captain vacancies for the number of eligible lieutenants in the country. How disgruntled will a person be when he or she goes for this competition that has not been run in many years and does not succeed because there are no positions? Despite this, we are supposedly going to run a captain-to-commandant competition, involving a move to the next rank up, later in the year. Would it not make sense to run the captain-to-commandant competition first and create vacancies for captains to fill with the lieutenants? I will leave that with the members. It makes sense to me. I do not understand why things are operating in the way they are.

Second, Defence Forces Regulation R5 was amended last year and implemented in June, four months after a Commission on Defence report stated we should establish a Reserve with colonels and possibly a brigadier general. Does Defence Forces Regulation R5 allow for the promotion to brigadier general or colonel in the Reserve? I believe members know the answer to that one. It was not even updated following the statement of the Commission on Defence.

Then we changed the promotion prospects, meaning that if you want to convene a competition, it has to be convened by the general officer commanding the relevant formation. That entails the 1 Brigade, the 2 Brigade or the Defence Forces training centre. Defence Forces headquarters is not a formation that has a general officer commanding, so we cannot convene a competition for captains in Defence Forces headquarters because we do not have a general officer commanding. Therefore, all the vacancies cannot be advertised in the current competition, which means we are losing out on those vacancies. People will get promoted elsewhere and can transfer into the positions and leave positions behind them that some disgruntled people have applied for and could not get. This is Kafkaesque; this makes no sense. That is the kind of obstacle you face when serving.