Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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A report of this significance does not just get signed off on overnight. I need to find agreement with multiple other Departments, particularly the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Department of Finance and the Department of the Taoiseach, in order to get final agreement on the report. I think we are almost there. There has been an awful lot of work on this. We are not just signing off on a memo here; we are also signing off on an action plan. There are 69 different actions asked of us in the report. If the sub-actions are added, there are 130 or so. We will itemise all of those and then give an indication as to how or if we will progress them all, whether we agree with them in principle but more work is required, whether we can progress them straight away, whether more advice is required in order to progress them and so on. There has been an enormous amount of work. I pay tribute to my Department and to the Chief of Staff and his team in the Defence Forces because, certainly in my time in politics, I have never seen such a level of co-operation on the civil and military side with regard to bringing forward something with the same level of ambition coming from both the Department and the Defence Forces. I have never seen that as strong as it is now. My job is to get the rest of the Government on board. I think there is an appetite in the Government that recognises that the commission report is a really good piece of work. Many of the Ministers to whom I have spoken have taken the time to read it, and it is quite a big piece of work. I think we will get it past the Government. Considering the other pressures the Government faces at the moment, however, this is a huge financial commitment and we are finalising how it will be rolled out in the years ahead. I am very confident we will be in a position to bring it to the Government probably the week after next.