Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the witnesses recognise that they are behind friendly lines. Everyone on the committee is totally motivated to try to make things as good as we practically can. I thank Mr. Richardson for his opening statement. It was very stark, as the Chair said. It was candid and very hard-hitting. Not only do I agree with everything in it; I fully endorse it. It is entirely my precise experience, having been in the RDF and the PDF. I think the witnesses are owed an apology for how their organisation was treated, or mistreated, to follow on from the good Senator's comments, over the past 20 years. We had a functioning organisation, and the State and its agents set about to utterly dismantle it over a 20-year period. It is shocking that that took place.

I will start with some positives. I will double down on some of the comments that have been made. Sending an RDF soldier overseas was brilliant, even if it was only for seven days. It is a proof of concept. We talk about the glass ceiling. That is the green ceiling that has been smashed and shattered, and it is an excellent step forward. The more the merrier, as far as I am concerned. That should be happening far more frequently. As it is such a historic watershed moment, if the witnesses want to put the name of the individual on the record for his benefit or his grandchildren's benefit, that is perfectly fine, if they think that is appropriate.

A second positive is that, although most people may not be aware of this, four boats for the Naval Reserve are being constructed here in Ireland, in a shipyard in Valentia. I will try to get down there over the summer to eyeball them myself. It just shows that there are some positives happening.

We are getting the hard stuff right; it seems to be the easy stuff that is letting us down. Most the problems the witnesses have mentioned - this is probably not a question but more of a comment - seem to be down to basic governance. We do not have a dedicated, stand-alone Minister for Defence. Whatever one's views on the Tánaiste are, whether good, bad or indifferent, he cannot do six jobs. He is doing six jobs - or attempting to do six jobs - at the moment. He is the senior defence Minister; he is the junior defence Minister because we have an appointed junior defence Minister, Deputy Peter Burke, but no powers have been devolved; he is the Tánaiste; he is the Minister for Foreign Affairs; he is a party leader; and he is a deputy party leader. He is therefore trying to do six jobs, and if that were not bad enough, we have no special adviser in the Department of Defence at all. Most Ministers have a special adviser or spad. There is none for the Minister for Defence. There are all these basic governance issues, and all the structures are horrendous. There is no entity I know of in the country that has a dual reporting process in the way there is the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces the whole way down. Normally, there is a board and an executive, and the board does not get involved in the day-to-day running of the entity. The executive is empowered just to get on with it and the board sets the policy. That is how it should be. I am therefore not surprised it took ten years to review an R5 document. Is that about 50 pages long? That could have been done in a week. One would not accept that from a college student or a leaving certificate student, yet we accept it from a State entity. As regards the 2015 White Paper, not a single RDF project was even commenced. Where is the accountability here? Was anyone sanctioned or sacked as a result? Nobody seems to care.

Recruitment was mentioned. There is a 5% return on recruitment. There are better odds on an Army Ranger Wing, ARW, selection course. It is appalling and it just seems to reek of this paralysis in that the witnesses know what they want to achieve. It was simple to join the Reserve Defence Force in the past. What has happened in the meantime? Why have we invented all these layers such as fitness testing and medicals? I can see why security clearance is required, but the Garda Reserve is in a similar situation. Its strength is generally about 1,500. It is down to about 300. I believe a major recruitment drive is taking place in the Garda Reserve for October; so the Minister, Deputy Harris, told me a couple of months ago, when he was Minister for Justice. Do the witnesses have any liaison with the Garda Reserve? Does it have the similar layers of fitness testing and medical testing? I presume it has security clearance, but it seems to me that it is much easier to get into the Garda Reserve than it is to get into the Reserve Defence Force.

I have a couple of other questions. I think ours is the only country in the EU without an air force reserve, which is bananas. To clarify, do the witnesses represent the First Line Reserve as well? They do not. Who represents the First Line Reserve? That might be an appropriate question. Furthermore, do the witnesses know of any member of the PDF who has retired from the PDF and joined the Reserve Defence Force in, say, the past 12 months? That would be useful information. That is a channel that should absolutely be used. It should be offered to almost every member of the PDF who is retiring just to populate the PDF.

From the perspective of Ukraine, I feel like we are like the financial regulators of 2005, 2006 and 2007. They were clueless. They did not know what was happening. We have no excuse, however. We can see that the risks to Ireland now are not financial but geopolitical. I think history will judge the political establishment very poorly as to how poorly we have prepared for this country's defences. Risk management is an integral part of any organisation, but the way the country's risk management is being handled is absolutely shocking. I do not know of any other entity that would be so reckless with its future. We are playing Russian roulette with the country, and ours of all countries should realise how important it is to maintain one's sovereignty. Yes, the Ukrainian situation is a couple of thousand kilometres away - some people would say that - but we have no idea what trajectory we are on. While it might be a couple of thousand kilometres away from a land perspective, it is only 12 nautical miles away from a sea and an air perspective. There are Russian ships pushing up to our 12-nautical-mile limit and nobody seems to care. That is how close the conflict is.

Following on from what the good Senator Ardagh said, how can we help? The witnesses asked for an office of Reserve affairs to be properly populated. Can they confirm that there was the equivalent of an office of Reserve affairs ten years ago called the directorate of Reserve? There was, so we are reinventing the wheel. The structures that existed ten years ago were perfectly appropriate but we dismantled them and now we are trying to go back to the future.

To confirm, DFR R5 is Defence Force Reserve Regulation 5, I presume. It is inappropriately titled because it is not a Defence Forces regulation but a ministerial regulation drafted by the Department and imposed on the Defence Forces. It is not really the job of the Defence Forces to modify this. This is a ministerial direction, which goes back to our governance issue.

As regards Reserve recruitment, is there any possibility of doctors, that is, medical officers, in the Reserve doing medicals for the reserves? A number of doctors are serving in the Reserve at the moment. Some of them are even more skilled than the Permanent Defence Force medical officers. Can they not be utilised to do the medicals?

To my final point, I accept absolutely Mr. Gargan's views on the figure of 15,500. There should really be 15,500 people in the Defence Forces at the moment. The Government's plan is to have 11,500 in the PDF and slightly more than 4,000 in the Reserve Defence Force. People do not know this, but the Defence Forces are the Permanent Defence Force and the Reserve Defence Force. The Defence Forces are not a land, sea and air component.

Those are my only comments. Thank you for your indulgence, Chair. I welcome the fact that there are people from the Reserve Defence Force going overseas. I welcome the fact that four new boats are being constructed by an Irish company in an Irish shipyard. We should celebrate that. I asked questions about the Air Corps Reserve, the First Line Reserve, any PDF members joining the Reserve Defence Force recently, any liaison the witnesses have had with the Garda Reserve and whether it has its own representative association. I very much take Mr. Gargan's point about the figure of 15,500. That is the number I will highlight in future.