Mr. Eugene Gargan:

To follow from what the Senator has referred to, and again harking back to my own background a number of years ago in cyber security, it is one of these examples that is often quoted; that and medical expertise. We have highly qualified doctors, anaesthetists, surgeons and people like that in the Reserve who ought to be utilised and who are perfectly willing. The overarching issue in relation to the utilisation of members of the Reserve for a specialist role does come back to employment protection. This is not something we had specifically prepared to present today. We had another more urgent issue which we have debated and discussed. With employment performance and employment protection, and even just the creation of appropriate legislation that would protect reservists in every form, so many questions have to be addressed. They are simple basic things like what would happen if a reservist is injured or is killed accidentally or in the line of duty when they are serving their country? What happens to their civilian pension or to the sick pay scheme their employer is paying for? Who bears responsibility for this? We have touched upon this with the working time directive, which has brought a little bit of focus to this particular challenge and these types of questions. This is something the RDFRA has tabled with the Department and with military management for the last number of years. We say that it is not quite urgent yet but it is very important and to please not underestimate the amount of work it will take in order to look at this. We are informed that this work is about to commence, if it has not already done so. A consultant group is being established to look at it and to look at the requirements for what needs to be done. That is a significant body of work. I work in industrial relations and I can tell the committee that there is a lot to be done there.

It is going to be a significant block at some point in the future for both recruitment and the utility of reservists. If you consider the scenario where there is another cyber or hybrid attack made on the State, presumably the same critical infrastructure is also within the domain of the private operators - mobile phone companies, broadband companies and people like that. They are also going to look for the very same experts to look after their infrastructure and if the State or the military approaches the CEO of an ISP to say, "No, we need that individual to come do something for the HSE", how is the employer to respond? The employer will say, "Hang on, I paid for their training and certification. I keep their ongoing training going. I am paying into their pension. They work for me for 48 weeks of the year, depending on what it is, so surely I have first call". These questions will be thrashed out. Government policy has yet to catch up in that particular area. We have a view. We would suggest that there is a greater priority in service to the State but we are reservists. We would say that, would we not? There is a significant piece of work-----