Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Our guests are welcome. When I read the opening statement last night, I was struck by how sad it was. It is depressing and sad that our guests feel they are not getting the respect to which they are entitled. The commission seems to have hit on and recognised that. Sometimes I feel that is how we do things around here.

We have a great history of volunteerism in Ireland. I was a member of Maynooth Community First Responders. Every week, people came out to train for three hours. We had to train every week. At weekends, we ran fundraisers. No one was getting paid. We were delighted to be part of our community and to give something. We have a great history in that regard. When I was younger, many of the lads were members of the FCA. It was only the lads, and not the women, at the time. The barracks was closer. They used to go out to Gormanston but we also had a barracks nearby in Finglas. I live in Kildare and the closest military place is in The Curragh, outside Newbridge and Kildare town. It is not easy for people to join their local RDF. Has consideration been given to active, movable camps? I know there would be arms and ammunition involved, which would have to be protected. Every large town has a Garda station where those arms and ammunition could be protected and held safely.

The FCA was always associated with young people. Have our guests considered taking retired members of the Defence Forces or looking to recruit medics? We recently had four days of a consultative forum. We must rethink our defence and how we defend our country. We might need more teachers, doctors, nurses, people with cyber experience and that kind of thing. We need to recruit such people into the RDF. At that forum, we talked about interoperability around ammunition and so on. We might be able to join NATO if we took such a notion. It is mad to think there is no interoperability in respect of paperwork between the RDF and the Defence Forces when they are parts of the same group and report to the same Department.

There has been a lot of talk about fitness tests. We have to rethink how we defend the country. It is not all about who can carry the heaviest piece of metal up a hill or anything like that.

Our guests have told us what they want us to do. They have given us three things to do immediately. It is up to us now to run with those. Various talks at the consultative forum observed that defence must now become a whole-of-society thing. What do our guests see as their role in that regard? Perhaps they could talk a little about that.