Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I welcome all my former colleagues. I am sorry I missed a small part of their presentations as I had to attend the Order of Business. The first matter regarding membership and retaining membership is an issue we encountered during my time in the Teachers Union of Ireland. Teachers retired after their service, melted away and were lost to the organisation.

The Retired Members Association put in place a pre-retirement programme, part of which involved the association meeting people who were about to leave and encouraging them to join it. I do not know whether the witnesses' organisations have that facility, but they can address the matter in a few moments.

Three or four years ago, I introduced the Defence (Veterans Lapel Badge) Bill in the Seanad. It was a simple little Bill and the idea behind it was to give a singular form of branding, as it were, to every veteran who left. The idea comes from the UK, where every veteran who has at least one year's service and leaves without any blemish on his or her record is entitled to apply for a veteran's pin. To aid and abet the organisations' memberships, if both of them were in a position to issue a veterans lapel pin were it to come into force, they would have a database of all veterans throughout the country. It would help the organisations to grow. I am interested in the witnesses' views on this suggestion.

A number of the witnesses are familiar with Mr. Danny Kinahan from Northern Ireland. They will be aware that the commissioner's office was not an easy transition and that it took some time to put in place, although the one in Britain came about quite easily. I would be interested in hearing their views on two matters, the first of which is the importance of a veterans office. They may have dealt with this idea in my absence. The second matter is the importance of the role of commissioner and how it might fit into their organisations.

Mr. Brennan mentioned education. I believe he was a major general when he invited me to Carlow for a graduation ceremony. It is one of the great innovations of the Defence Forces in modern times that no soldier needs to leave without an academic skill of some sort or other, be it Further Education and Training Awards Council, FETAC, Quality and Qualifications Ireland or whatever. In Mr. Brennan's service days, was any effort ever made to link up with organisations like Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Intel and other large companies? In the UK, there is a veterans programme where some large organisations show a natural bias towards veterans by taking in and training a small number of them each year. I do not know whether that is something that the Defence Forces has explored, but I would be interested in knowing.

I believe it was 1979 or 1980 when I was walking up a street in Limerick and met a former member of my old battalion, An Chéad Chathlán Coisithe. The man was a vagrant at that stage, had nowhere to go and was in a pitiful state. Mr. O'Connor made the point that the situation had probably changed now, but many members of my generation who joined the Defence Forces stayed there for their 30 years or more and were institutionalised. When it came to leaving back in the good old days, people used to be left in the barracks and no one ever took much notice, but that has all changed and it is not allowed now. Thankfully, ONE has accommodation. Regarding the resettlement programme, does Mr. O'Connor see a need for further houses in places like Galway and other parts of the country? Has he spoken to any of the housing agencies to support that?

The issue of pension abatement was referenced a few moments ago. It has been of great concern to me for a long time. The skills with which people leave the Defence Forces were mentioned. First and foremost, we are a disciplined organisation. Generally speaking, if a soldier or member of the Air Corps or Naval Service leaves the forces, a future employer can be assured that he or she will turn up at 9 a.m., deliver a full day's work and leave in the evening when he or she has to. That person will always be available if an emergency arises because that is the way we have been trained to work.

We now find that, due to slow recruitment, we need to bring back many of the skills that we lost through retirement. For example, one will find a number of former Naval Service personnel working in the Naval Service and a number of former Army personnel working in the armouries of the Curragh and various other places around the country. However, the word coming back to me is that, due to pension abatement, fewer people want to return to the public service because they can retain their pensions while holding jobs in the private sector and reaping the rewards of the service they gave to the State. I am aware that there is the likelihood of a High Court challenge because there are several examples of a pension being treated as a property right that no one can touch. Are the witnesses hearing anything from their members about how pension abatement is impacting their lives and, in particular, their career choices? If we cannot bring back armourers and Naval Service personnel because of it, we are in serious trouble. There are other ways around the problem, one of which could be a different salary scale, but pensions should never be touched.

I thank the witnesses for their time.