Mr. Eugene Gargan:

Senator Craughwell asked about the structure of the RDF and the effect the reorganisation in 2012 had. Much has been said about that particular exercise. We argue it was not done in a way that was particularly effective and certainly did not help us in the way it moved personnel around from one unit to another and, in fact, even between corps as well. However, that was in the past. We want to move forward. We particularly took on board what the commission report stated. That pointed out a way, in terms that were about as clear as could be, the RDF should be used and how it should be reconstituted.

Recruitment in respect of the 1,000 applications can be looked at in a number of different ways. We referenced the conversion rate, as poor as it is, for every 1,000 applications. In any other endeavour, for instance, an organisation recruiting personnel who are ordinary employees, if it were that difficult to get into that organisation or there was that much demand for it, it would have to ask itself questions about how it was conducting business, considering that the state of the organisation attempting to recruit is as poor as it is. We look at the outcomes. We are not looking at specific measures, although these are sometimes used and might be technically correct. The Department might make statements about where it is processing at various points in the actual process chain, but the way we look at it is how many people we can convert and actually get into the RDF.

I will pass the question on paid training and major exercises to Mr. Cooney.