Mr. Se?n Clancy:

I think I have answered a lot of these. When it comes to the Reserve Defence Force, I refer back to my opening statement. I am not comparing the Reserve Defence Force with the Civil Defence. I cannot accept that comparison. The single force concept is based around the idea everyone is the same, that is, in order for the Reserve Defence Force and the Permanent Defence Force to serve together and integrate, they must be of a similar standard. I think we both accept that for that concept to work it has to be on that basis. Therefore, the bar for entry must be similar in that space. As Deputy Berry rightly pointed out, there is no regulatory barrier to transferring into the first-line reserve, for instance. The corporate memory has been lost to a degree, but these are issues I have tasked the office of Reserve affairs with. As I said, I have put a colonel in charge of that specifically to have a hand on the tiller with these issues, because that had been absent since the reorganisation in 2012. I am aware of all the issues the Deputy has raised and the Reserve affairs office will be addressing those issues through the regeneration. The numbers are down, as the Deputy said. The ideal is to have the medical be internal, but that is not the reality of what we have today. We need to accelerate our ability to induct more quickly through medicals and so on and so forth.

The average timeframe Deputy Stanton asked about is five months from start to finish. I want to improve and enhance that, which is why we are looking at the three areas specifically in terms of it. I accept the Deputy's point, but getting down into the data about failures, non-failures and so and so forth might be different. He was given holistic figures as per the question posed at that time.