Mr. Conor King:

We know that we need 9,500 people to do what we are currently doing, and we are told we need 11,500 to do the bare minimum. However, if we have 7,600, we know there is no redundancy. Rather, there is negative redundancy and no resilience. We are not dropping any balls here or putting anything down. In this regard, the introduction of the working time directive is so important because it will legally empower commanders on the ground to say they do not have the resources and cannot do the job. Then the decision will have to go back up the line rather than resorting to the can-do, make-do and muddle-through we see every single day in Óglaigh na hÉireann. The can-do attitude is what is killing us in terms of recruitment and retention. It should not be. The can-do attitude is an extremely positive element of our culture of which advantage has been taken, unfortunately.

With regard to housing, we made a submission on military housing to the Commission on the Defence Forces and those associated with the high-level implementation plan. Those submissions were not engaged with. They are a matter of public record and are on the website – not our website but the Government's. Consider what occurs in other military organisations. We inherited many of our structures from the UK armed forces, or the British Army, as it has been known. Housing is part of the X factor, the total benefits package. The provision of military housing does two things: it rewards people for military service and takes pressure off the rest of the nation regarding housing provision, taking people off the social housing list. That contributes to society as well in that you have a happy worker in the Defence Forces and one person off the housing list. The linkages exist.