Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a number of questions, if any of the Deputies wants to cut across and come back for fairness sake.

I thank the Tánaiste and the officials for being here. I will try to deal with it in order of the document.

On PDF pay, the budget 2024 documents stated there would be additional investment of €21 million in core current funding including "An additional net 400 Defence Force personnel" but the budget 2023 documents cited funding "to support the recruitment of an additional net 400 PDF recruits". The budgetary allocations for current pay in 2023 was €564 million and the 2024 allocation is cited as €550 million. I suppose the question is, why or how do budget documents announce an increase in funding to support the recruitment of 400 personnel? When one takes into account that we lost a net 416 personnel in 2023, there should be scope within the existing allocation to recruit an additional 800. Am I reading that wrong?