Mr. Martin Ryan:

I thank the Deputy for raising this and for her advocacy on it over the past number of weeks. It is heartening to see. On the other side, it is disappointing when she hears a response from our employers to the effect that there is no problem and we are getting the applicants instead of looking at, as the Deputy has rightly pointed out, addressing a fair pay issue. Something that has been alluded to that would assist in solving the problem is local bargaining. A total of 1% of a cadet's pay is €250 per person, so that is what we would be looking at in the context of an increase. It is disingenuous to give that answer to how we should address cadet pay. The Deputy has hit the rates correctly. The business case that was submitted by the Defence Forces has been sitting with the Department since September or October last year. This followed on from a motion we had in conference about increasing cadets' pay to parity with a three-star private after six months. As the Deputy rightly alluded to, it is similar qualifications, or they should be as qualified. That would require a 40% increase in pay at the moment.

On the age profile of a cadet, we increased the ages to 39 years of age for all inductions. The cadet of today is not like the cadet of yesteryear when we joined a long time ago. We are now talking about people with families and we are paying them €25,000 , rising to €27,000 in their second year. The cadetship lasts for 18 months for the Army and up to two years for Air Corps and Naval Service equivalent. They are an outlier now based on pay. It is as a simple as that. Rightly - and it was great to see - the anomalies regarding three-star pay were addressed. They got rid of the apprentice rank and brought them into correspond with the three-star pay after six months. At present, everyone else in the Defence Forces after six months, if they fulfil their training criteria, is on approximately €43,000 per year, while the cadet is still stuck on €25,000. We are in the era of post 2013 and career average earnings and pensions. They are absolutely getting doubly punished. It is impacting on their future and how they can provide for their families and pensions. It is amazing this sort of stuff is not being considered by our employers when they look at this.