Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that. However, the same people who the ombudsman says take it seriously now did not take is seriously previously. The hope is that lessons were learned by those people. I do not believe there has been a massive churn of personnel at the higher end. That happens mostly at the NCO grades.

We have been told that there is a recruitment issue within the Defence Forces. It would not necessarily be considered a great place to work. They cannot recruit people at the moment. My understanding is that some efforts have been made to address pay and other issues, but recruitment into the Defence Forces remains a problem. Has the ombudsman any advice as to how that might be improved? He is telling us that things are different and much better. The Defence Forces got a bit of a going over in the press, probably with some justification, having read the reports and spoken to some of the personnel involved. Does the ombudsman think there is anything that can or should be done or that we, as legislators, should be looking at to improve the situation?