Mr. Martin Cooney:

As for the reason it is difficult, if one looks at any recruitment campaign - say the last one that happened earlier this year - the upshot of the entire campaign is that for the formation in, for example, the Defence Forces training centre, DFTC, one gets a recruit platoon. I am unsure of the exact numbers but in general, one gets perhaps 50 people for that formation and then there are three formations. As for the current campaign that is ongoing again in the DFTC, I believe there are 80 applicants for that at present. In general, our figures show that for any one successful recruit, one needs four applicants. Consequently, just on a statistical level, to recruit 1,000 successful applicants, one would need 4,000 applications. That said, if one got the interest, the resources are not there to train them. One needs people on the ground to train reservists and I would challenge any semi-State or State body to recruit 1,000 people in a year in circumstances in which they must have the people undergo medical examinations and security checks, which can take anything from six to 12 weeks, as well as to undergo interviews and the entire process. Consequently, there are logistical issues with training that number of people, whereby one is trying to bring up part-time personnel on their spare time and using up their previous annual leave. One has a permanent force that has been under huge pressure since its reorganisation and there are the issues of all the administrative criteria, leaving aside the sheer numbers, which are huge.