Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I suspect the reply to some of Deputy Brady's questions may inform some of the other questions. I thank the Deputy for paying tribute to the Defence Forces, whose members do an extraordinary job, particularly overseas. I have been to UNIFIL five or six times now and every time I am impressed by the relationship it has with local communities and how trusted those personnel are with local communities and the Lebanese armed forces, for example. They are doing a great job there. I have also been to the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, UNDOF, although not recently because one cannot get to UNDOF now without going through Damascus, which is impossible for a Minister. It is unfortunate that it is almost impossible to visit our troops in UNDOF but I get reports from there. I have been to the training mission in Mali as well. Again, our troops have done a really good job there.

The Deputy is right in outlining the difficulties we have and we do not have as many people in the Defence Forces as we need in order to operate to the establishment number. That has put pressure on our systems and not only with the Naval Service, as is well documented now with regard to ships.

There were also pressures on the Air Corps and there has been pressure on the Army. They have done well to manage that pressure in terms of shortages of people. Certainly, some specialties have caused difficulty and that has resulted in some of the people on rotation being there under mandatory selection rather than voluntary selection. That is not where we want to be. However, it is important not to give the impression that everyone who is overseas is there on a mandatory basis as they are not. I have spent quite a bit of time speaking to our Defence Forces personnel overseas about these issues and the vast majority are very happy to be there and want to be there, and most of the people who are there under mandatory selection also recognise that there are pressure points that they are being asked to help resolve until we get the numbers up to where they need to be.

I do not have detail of the numbers in terms of the number of appeals around mandatory selection but I can try to get that for the Deputy - I will have to ask the Chief of Staff for that. I want to recognise that it is an issue but also that the overall picture in terms of overseas service continues to be remarkably positive. Clearly, we need to get at least our establishment number back to where it should be. I also suspect that the commission report’s recommendations will be accepted by the Government on the issue of increasing the establishment number, or I certainly hope that will be the case in the next couple of weeks, when I bring recommendations to the Government. In my view, we need a bigger Defence Forces with more resources so we can address the pressure points that the Deputy recognises and go on to do more, because there is a huge appetite in the Defence Forces for peacekeeping overseas.

I would also like to mention that, over the next decade or so, we will see the kind of missions that we commit to changing and probably see them becoming more complex. As Ireland's reputation is so good in terms of peacekeeping, I think we will see the UN ask us to be involved in more Chapter VII missions, which effectively are peace enforcement missions. They are, by their nature, more challenging in terms of training, equipment and everything from the grade of armour to the firepower, and so on. That takes time in terms of investment and training, and building up for those kinds of more complex Chapter VII missions which I suspect Ireland will be asked to contribute to in the future. Unfortunately, we are not short of conflicts around the world where there is going to be a need for peacekeeping intervention, and the best countries need to be there, particularly for the most complex missions, when those missions are justified, of course.

I want to give that background and context in terms of the work that is ongoing between the Department and the Defence Forces and in terms of our civil-military teams assessing not only where we are this year and next year, but where we might be in 2027 in 2028 in terms of future peacekeeping missions and so on. That kind of planning is necessary because the processes of upgrading, training and new equipment, and the associated tendering processes and procurement, takes years with regard to defence equipment.

In terms of the European Union Training Mission, EUTM, we did not ignore the triple lock because as this is a training mission, it did not require the triple lock, or that is my understanding of it anyway.