Mr. Conor King:

I thank the Deputy for the question. It is hugely important that the conciliation and arbitration scheme is properly functioning. The Deputy is right that there have been incidences, if not a trend, in the recent past of conciliation and arbitration as a cornerstone of the defence apparatus being de-prioritised. That is clear to us. Even within this, I alluded to the fact that through the conciliation and arbitration mechanism, as general secretary I wrote to the Department's conciliation and arbitration branch in July 2024 seeking guidance and clarity in the administration of local leave because our members were literally screaming down the phone at us, asking us how they could put someone on suspension with no regulations in place. We were also asking for clarity on the attendance of an officer at a civil court hearing, to which Senator Craughwell alluded previously. To this day, I have received no guidance from my employer, on behalf of my members. That is simply not good enough.

The Deputy mentioned other initiatives. We had, for example, the Public Service Pay Commission in 2017 and 2019 and so many recommendations came out of that. In 2019 we had a high-level implementation plan which had a roadmap for sorting out the Defence Forces retention difficulties. We were asked to make submissions in relation to various projects that we thought would be good for retention. We made something like 12 or 13 fully costed submissions over the course of a year and a half and got no feedback whatsoever on them. Then we were told that all of those projects were closed. They were simply closed. The Secretary General unilaterally closed many of them or rolled them into the Commission on the Defence Forces. Some of them actually called for service commitment schemes for technicians in the Naval Service, for example, and on the enlisted side, for engine room artificers, radar technicians and on the officer side, for marine engineers, electrical engineers and obviously, the aforementioned air traffic control. The Deputy asked if we were consulted on air traffic control and the answer is "No". We were not consulted on the air traffic control service commitment scheme until it was agreed and locked in. At that stage we pointed out that the scheme was in no way fit for purpose. The pilot officer or flying officer service commitment scheme had literally just been dusted down and applied to air traffic control.

The pilot scheme called for members who were availing of the scheme to be fully rated on aircraft as pilots and to have a 12-year undertaking, and also to conduct operational flying on a regular basis. None of that applied to the air traffic controllers. We pointed that out and got no response.