Mr. Se?n Clancy:

Deputy Stanton had two questions.

One was on recruitment and the second was on the psychometric testing and the specific impact on the Naval Service. I put in place a six-month trial for that and we have to wait until the end to get the data and the analytics. There appears to be an impact but I am not at liberty or I could not say at this point in time, to be quite frank, though we are very conscious of it and I want to see what the impact is thereafter. I am also conscious of the fact that when we have removed psychometric testing before it has caused a cause-and-effect issue, perhaps, in other areas. It was very identifiable in terms of our recruiting and being able to recruit certain individuals, so it is not as simplex as just removing the psychometric test. I am conscious we have to put enablers in place and it is on one of several areas a recruit and anybody coming into the organisation has to step through in order to join and I wanted to go back to that.

If I can answer on the office of Reserve affairs, which came up especially with Senator O'Reilly, who asked some directed questions, but also with Deputy Carthy. We have an office of Reserve affairs fully up and running. It is manned initially by an OF5 - a colonel in charge of it - and we have started to grow the office from there. We currently have an OF4 assigned to it as well, which is a lieutenant colonel, and we have an NCO and also a Reserve officer of OF4 rank in the office itself. From my perspective the office is therefore developing and evolving on an appropriate timeline and in an appropriate way. One of the key tasks given to that office is to create a regeneration plan for the Reserve. That regeneration plan has got many facets to it, one of which is the retirement age, which the Senator mentioned. There has already been a food-for-thought paper positioned with general staff for consideration in that area because it is one of the key elements. The very early retirement age is now 50 years of age for corporals and below in the reserve, as members will be aware. That came into place in October 2005, if I recall. Those who joined before 2005 can serve up to 60 years of age and for those who joined after 2005 it is 50 years of age. That is something that is part of the food-for-thought paper we are looking at.