Ms Jacqui McCrum:

I was going to go back to Deputy Stanton. We have answered on the psychometric tests. I think the other question the Deputy asked was about the seagoing allowance, the patrol duty allowance. That is payable to personnel serving aboard a Naval Service ship on patrol duty away from the naval base. This is currently in place. In addition to that we have a specific Naval Service seagoing tax credit and a Naval Service seagoing commitment scheme. Both of those were introduced in the last number of years. The Commission on the Defence Forces recommended they should be replaced with less complex seagoing duty measures and that we should just roll them all up into one. That is an issue currently under active discussion with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. I am hopeful we will come to a conclusion in the coming weeks. It is something that has been on the Tánaiste's high-priority agenda and something we are addressing.

I think Deputy Stanton asked the number of personnel on the seagoing commitment scheme and I gather 32 applications to that were approved in January 2022. The other matter was the retention payment. He mentioned other militaries abroad had introduced bonuses. I was in Washington in the US in July this year and we discussed finances and what was working, because there has certainly been very strong visibility of the bonus payments being paid there. The US view was the world has changed and the finances were not necessarily attracting people in. I am sure they attract some in and have some impact, but the view the Americans gave - and we are working closely with them to get some research on it - on the nature of this cultural change that has happened, especially perhaps with the new generation but also post Covid, was that the world of work has changed and militaries need to take account of that. In a lot of cases militaries are struggling to find people outside those conscription areas. As members know, all our work has been reimagined and maybe that is something we need to do with the Defence Forces. We are certainly not the only ones struggling. The Americans are not meeting their naval targets either.

I think Senator O'Reilly asked about waiting lists for medicals for the Reserves.