Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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People will remember that period for all the wrong reasons because there was an effective recruitment ban right across the public sector in an effort to save money. That was not applied to the Defence Forces as rigidly as it was applied elsewhere, because we were allowed to recruit essential staff in terms of skill sets and so on, but it was still a real limitation. If one looks at more recent years, particularly 2013 and 2014, one will see significantly more people being recruited than in 2009 and 2010. My ambition is to get numbers in the Defence Forces up to a minimum of 9,500, as opposed to making that a target to be reached. We are at about 9,200 at the moment and there is a recruitment campaign which will push that figure up to close to 9,500. Over the next year or so, I would like to get that figure up to 9,500, to go above it slightly and then come back down, but to hover on that figure. That is difficult to manage, as people leave in numbers that are hard to predict. We are more than justified in ensuring that we are funding, managing and recruiting to have a floating figure of 9,500, as opposed to having that as a target at the end of the year.