Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 October 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence

Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces: Engagement with Chair of Implementation Oversight Group

3:10 pm

Ms Julie Sinnamon:

The external oversight body was set up on a statutory footing, in line with the legislation that was recently passed, following one of the 13 recommendations from the IRG report and that will probably happen some time before the end of the year. That is the timeframe we are working towards as a group to transfer to that. I am the only member of both groups. All the recommendations in the IOG remit that are of an HR or cultural nature have joint oversight, if we can call it that. The IOG still looks at where we are against the timeline for those 130 actions, but the objective of the EOB in looking at its brief relates to overseeing the cultural change and the management of that within the Defence Forces.

To date, we have had at least 32 meetings. We meet every two weeks. We have substantial engagement with the Chief of Staff and various staff within the Defence Forces. In recent weeks, we were out with the air force in Baldonnel and we have also been in Haulbowline and Collins Barracks. We are out talking to people on the ground and hearing different inputs. We are engaging with the consultants who have been appointed by the Defence Forces with a view to supporting the Defence Forces to implement the work within their brief. We are engaging with the Department because, just as on the IOG agenda there are actions the Defence Forces have to do, there are also actions the Department has to do. The EOB is engaging to see whether all those backs and forwards are working together and that all the actions are happening. It is substantially time-consuming work, involving working with all those parties and, with the support of the secretariat, looking at international best practice and what has happened elsewhere. Many of the issues we are facing have been experienced in other countries by other defence forces at different times, so we are trying to learn from that.

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