Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

The patrol duty allowance at the moment is a daily rate. There is a seagoing tax credit for a person who qualifies for the requisite number of days at sea in a calendar year. It is open to some people whose seagoing pattern suits the tax year. Other people will do as many days, but if they fall in a different pattern, they do not get it. The sea service commitment scheme is an opt-in scheme. Again, you must do your sea days in a particular pattern. Someone could do the required number of days in the required amount of time but not in the right slots and not qualify. All these things are issues that make them very difficult to manage. If someone is sent to sea on a relief for two weeks at short notice, he or she will only get the basic PDA. That person will not be in the hat for either of the other two. All these things add to the frustration and confusion about what is a day at sea.

Before going into what we would like to see, I will return to the Deputy’s kind comments on the exercise last week. That exercise shows the professionalism of the members of the Defence Forces and the positive aspects of the Defence Forces culture. It is important we say that here. What we understand is happening is a calculation is being arrived at on the quantum of what each of the three elements combined would be. That calculation can depend on how many days are counted to qualify for each of those, so different calculations could be done. What we would like to see is a rate of PDA that is in the range of what other Government agencies get, that is, not less than what anyone else gets. That is ultimately what we would like to see.