Commandant Jayne Lawlor:

Approximately 560 out of 9,500. There are two main reasons - recruitment and retention. In terms of recruitment, we started this year. Because of the moratorium in the public service there was no recruitment, either of males or females. What happened was that the school visits ceased, while the Defence Forces presence at the career option events came to an end because there was no recruitment. We need to get out and raise awareness and we started this year by contacting schools. I wrote to every school in the country that had more than 200 female pupils and asked if we could visit them. That is something we need to continue. Other measures at which we could look would include visiting sports clubs to try to get girls who are interested in sport. Obviously, there is a suitability aspect and they should be physically capable of doing the job.

Retention has always been an issue. We are examining a number of family-friendly policies. One of the main factors for us - it is specific to the Defence Forces - is that many of our courses tend to be long residential courses. I have four children at home and it is difficult to go and spend nine months at the Curragh. We are looking at modularising these courses in order that one can take them over two years.

The second main factor is serving overseas. If one has a young family, it is difficult to go away and leave one's children for six or nine months. We are looking at job-sharing overseas in order that will one spend, perhaps, three or four months overseas at a time instead of six. We are trying to look at different ways of doing things and different initiatives in this regard.