Ms Jacqui McCrum:

The top three challenges we see for the Reserve Defence Force are, potentially: recruitment, which is what the Cathaoirleach is alluding; the ability of the Reserve to be meaningfully deployed in terms of moving away from training for the sake of training, which was the feedback we got, in order that it would be a joint force and would deploy with the PDF; and looking at promotions for the Reserve Defence Force. We increased the budget this year to €2.35 million. Looking at the level of ambition, which is where we are going to in 2030, the ambition is to have 4,500 personnel, which is some way away from where we are at the moment.