Mr. Conor King:

I thank the Senator very much for the questions. In preparation for today's meeting, we did review, obviously, some of our recent appearances with previous committees. Going back to 2022-23, a common trend was a concern regarding dysfunctionality within the conciliation and arbitration structures. That was manifest in a number of manners. Principally, it was a lack of progress, very slow progress and a lack of accountability on issues that affect the men and women of Óglaigh na hÉireann. This could be anything from basic stuff like allowances and pay to employment rights. They are all kind of housed under this lack of consultation we keep talking about, and I am sure the Senator is tired of hearing. If I could give a quick example, we have on paper a very robust mechanism that includes third-party adjudication and arbitration. We have an arbitration board in place, which is appointed by Government. We willingly submit to that and adhere by the rulings of those.

In 2020, we had a case where a member of ours was disbarred from membership of RACO by virtue of his appointment to director of military prosecutions. We fought that case with gusto because it struck at the heart of representation. The Senator might recall in the previous Oireachtas committee when we were debated the defence amendment Bill and subsequent Act, that was actually in the Bill and was taken out afterwards. That still has not been resolved, even though the then Tánaiste and now Taoiseach said he wanted to see it come to a conclusion and said on the record in Dáil Éireann that he was quite satisfied that the appointment of a member of the Defence Forces and the independence of that appointment is not affected in any way by the membership of a representative association, which we would say is common sense. Even though the arbitration board has backed up that opinion, the Department has still sat on it and not moved. That shows dysfunctionality.

With regard to meetings of the conciliation council, which are quite structured, we feel conciliation and arbitration within the Department has taken a back seat. They work hard, by the way. When they seek updates from other areas of the Department of Defence in the same building, they are not forthcoming. That is a serious problem for us because if they are being sidelined, that means we are being sidelined and our members are being sidelined. They are just a couple of examples with regard to the conciliation and arbitration scheme. What we want to see from that is a better resourcing of it and better support for it. At our last conference, we would have called on the then Tánaiste, now Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, to pay more attention to the conciliation and arbitration scheme. That kind of neatly comes on to the oversight body. I will hand over to my colleagues in a second, but I will just talk about that. We are having good engagement at the moment with the oversight body. We are meeting with its representatives next week, for example. They have told us their primary role is to look first at the recommendations of the Commission on the Defence Forces with regard to HR matters, and there are a lot. However, what we have asked them to do, and what they have readily agreed to do, is to provide oversight over the conciliation and arbitration scheme. We are waiting to see the outcome of that oversight because it is badly needed.