Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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No, it is about school transport, which is equally as important.

Mr. Conor King:

Ba mhaith linn ár mbuíochas a ghabháil leis an gcoiste as ucht an chuiridh labhairt anseo inniu. We are privileged to be afforded the opportunity to join the committee today to give the perspective of the officers of Óglaigh na hÉireann on the current issues affecting our members and the Defence Forces. I am joined by Commandant Martin Ryan, RACO president, Lieutenant Commander Cian O'Mearáin from our Naval Service committee, Commandant Amy Colclough from 2 Brigade and Captain Jamie Bray, representing the Air Corps and our post-2013 members.

RACO represents over 95% of all commissioned officers and is therefore well placed to confidently speak to the challenges that are facing our membership and the wider Defence Forces. As the committee will no doubt note, most of the issues we will discuss today have featured in RACO’s previous appearances before this committee, in 2019 and 2021. Indeed, the only thing that really has changed is the strength of the organisation, and unfortunately not for the better. Our members have noted the largely positive outlook presented to this committee last week, underpinned by reporting on the implementation of the recommendations of the report of the Commission on the Defence Forces, but the reality is unfortunately somewhat different. Ambitious plans, with reports done and boxes ticked, may be presented as success in certain quarters but for the vast majority of serving personnel, it all means very little.

Promises of a bright future are welcome and necessary but our members are becoming accustomed to false dawns. The Defence Forces have been in a state of slow decline for almost a decade. It has reached the point that it is becoming irreversible; indeed, the attrition rate is intensifying, as the rate of reduction in strength clearly shows.

Numerous reviews and commissions have touched on the root cause of this decline without addressing it, namely, the failure adequately to resource defence in order to retain highly qualified and experienced personnel and maintain capability. The only true metric of the human capability of the Defence Forces is its strength versus establishment. The ambition for 2028 is 11,500 personnel. The recently updated current establishment figure is 9,600. In June 2021, when there were 8,580 personnel, we asked this committee if we had reached the bottom yet. As of 31 August this year, the strength stood at 7,671 personnel, or 79.9% of the current establishment and only 66.7% of the desired 2028 establishment. When the level of institutionalised vacancies is taken into account, encompassing personnel currently overseas, preparing for or just returned from overseas, on statutory leave, in long-term training and education, on induction training, or instructing that vital training, the numbers do not add up to 80% at all. They might not even reach 50% on an average day. That is just the Army. What about the Air Corps and the Naval Service? Why are so few aircraft operational? Why are three quarters of the State's fleet tied up in Haulbowline?

Recruitment is important and absolutely necessary, but so is retention. Expertise in any field, never mind the world of defence, can only be developed through experience. The fine cadets, recruits and apprentices joining the Defence Forces have ambition and potential but they lack experience. Thrusting them into positions of responsibility to fill gaps, without the time to gain that experience, is a recipe for disaster. As a case in point, more than 500 officers, or approximately 40% of our membership, have five years of commissioned service or less. This has severe implications for governance and supervision and it increases organisational risk.

We saw what was achieved last week with just one ship, one helicopter and highly qualified personnel working in a joint operation with other State agencies and international bodies. We can imagine what could be achieved if the Defence Forces were properly resourced for their current establishment, never mind the 2028 ambitions. The success of last week highlights the positive contribution the Defence Forces and their dedicated personnel can make to the State. Without adequately trained, motivated and incentivised personnel, the Defence Forces cannot contribute anything.

Last week, this committee heard that more than 95% of the early actions recommended by the Commission on the Defence Forces are now complete. However, we must consider what has really been completed. The early actions are littered with words like "commence", "evaluate", "develop", "explore" and "progress". Words like "actioned", "implemented" and "delivered" are largely absent, however, which is a significant point given we are talking about an action plan. Some work has been undertaken, granted, and certain improvements have happened, particularly for enlisted personnel. In truth, however, of the 95% of actions reported as completed, very few have yet to have any real impact on the ground or, going back to my first key point, on retention.

Richard Branson said: "Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to." The impact of operating with reduced numbers, and the associated stress, is felt across the entire Defence Forces. The Army is struggling to fulfil its assigned tasks, domestically and internationally. Ships are unable to go to sea and aircraft are not flying as a result of personnel shortages. Yet, the organisation continues to prioritise costly, labour-intensive recruitment policies in favour of tangible retention initiatives. The unsustainably high turnover rate and assumption of additional tasks such as the EU battle groups leads to the creation of a crippling operational and training tempo for remaining service personnel. Inadequate supervision and mentoring, combined with insufficient trained manning levels, leads to inevitable burnout and creates serious concerns for governance and the ability to manage risk and ensure the well-being of our personnel.

While pay and allowances have been repeatedly described as significantly improved, the reality is that while they have improved somewhat for new-entrant enlisted personnel, the extent of those improvements has been exaggerated and does not reflect the time commitment many Defence Forces personnel, particularly commissioned officers, commit. It is impossible to make a value judgment on the appropriateness or fairness of pay rates when the organisation does not even know how many hours its people are working. How many other public or private sector employers treat their workers like this, without even a defined working day or week? Furthermore, many key pay and allowance improvements have not been, nor are likely to be, implemented in the short term or even at all. Of those that have been implemented, many only benefit our colleagues in the enlisted personnel ranks. A key example of this is the specialised instructors allowance, which is vital to incentivise and reward quality instruction but is denied to our instructor members. White Paper projects, pay commission recommendations and allowance review mechanisms promised by Ministers and Department officials have seemingly disappeared into thin air. In the meantime, highly educated and experienced personnel are leaving for better conditions and work-life balance in the public and private sectors.

The Commission on the Defence Forces recommended that implementation of the working time directive should be urgently negotiated between management and representative associations as an early action under the high-level action plan. We have consistently argued that a failure to provide adequate rest and compensatory time off to military personnel significantly impacts their home life and the ability of many to sustain a career in the Defence Forces. For too long, management has treated members' time as an infinite resource, without consideration of work-life balance. The fact our organisation has never even recorded working time, in contravention of EU law, and still does not, denies our members access to benefits such as overtime that are available to other public sector employees. In stark contrast to members of An Garda Síochána, the Prison Service and, indeed, staff of all other public sector organisations, our Department and Minister do not appear to think us worthy of participating in a collective agreement on implementation. Notwithstanding strong commitments made by the Government to urgent implementation of the working time directive, the can is seemingly being further kicked down the road, with negotiations paused since May of this year and delivery timelines apparently extending without consultation.

Last week, the committee heard from our Chief of Staff, who said regarding pensions: "From the key takeaways and analysis of the exit surveys we have done, the pension issue has not arisen." RACO's own research into officers retiring voluntarily between 2020 and 2022 indicates that the vast majority - 78% - did not receive an exit interview or survey at all. Perhaps this has led to an incomplete interpretation of the key takeaways mentioned last week. For officers commissioned since 2013, pensions are a significant issue. For example, 22% of the first cadet class commissioned with this pension scheme have already left the organisation, and 79% of post-2013 officers have told us they do not see a long-term future in the organisation due to inadequate pension arrangements.

The Chief of Staff was not wrong when he stated that central issues affecting personnel include job satisfaction, work-life balance, working conditions, the uncertainty of postings, allowances and the pressures of work overall. However, to discount an issue that affects and will continue to affect an ever-growing proportion of serving personnel, particularly officers who are expected to lead, is concerning. More than 50% of RACO's members have been brought into the organisation since 2013. In 2021, the Chief of Staff told the Commission on Pensions:

The current Single Pension Scheme acts as a catalyst, pushing the Defence Forces' greatest asset (our people) to prematurely decide to depart the Permanent Defence Force. This affects operational capability and military effectiveness. As the principal military advisor to the Minister for Defence, it behoves me to advocate for special arrangements for the Permanent Defence Force personnel inducted under the Single Pension Scheme in order to compensate them for the unique nature and requirement of Military Service.

What has changed for Defence Forces personnel? Much time and effort has been spent on the really important issue of culture within the Defence Forces. The association of the actions of a few with the conduct of the vast majority has had a significant and negative impact on morale. The revelations of the Women of Honour in September 2021 have rightly shone a light on areas of unacceptable behaviour within the organisation, past and present, particularly for female personnel. RACO welcomes the statutory tribunal of inquiry, which must establish the facts and bring closure to victims of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment. The continued focus on and extensive use of the word "culture" to malign the vast majority of our dedicated Defence Forces personnel, and its use as the single most important benchmarking measurement of the organisation's effectiveness, serves to ignore the other systemic issues afflicting the Defence Forces. Again, critically, these include the lack of resourcing and the failure to retain suitably qualified and experienced personnel. Let us be clear. There are many positive elements of our culture, which are evident in the selfless and can-do attitude of our people, but the word "culture" has been hijacked by some in a negative way. People expect to be treated with respect and dignity but they must be valued and given purpose. When sidelined and not consulted, they become detached. This damages organisational culture.

RACO and PDFORRA, through our former membership of the independent monitoring group’s supervisory board, were once key stakeholders in addressing these negative workplace themes and frequently raised concerns that management was not using the agreed processes to the fullest possible extent in addressing and correcting recurring issues. The serious concerns raised tell us that no organisation can be complacent when it comes to unacceptable or criminal behaviour. We must all strive to keep the Defence Forces strong and vibrant but above all safe and welcoming for all members. The representative associations must be at the heart of ensuring that safety and well-being.

We continue to strongly believe in the value of the well-established independent monitoring group process, which unfortunately has been buried. We know we have a positive supervisory role to play in ensuring a healthy working climate for our members. The link between inadequate supervision, mentoring and governance and inappropriate behaviour and administration of complaints remains undeniable. Sadly, telling us we are stakeholders while treating us as outsiders is all too familiar and a recipe for failure. We have also experienced this exclusion from process throughout the recent Commission on the Defence Forces high-level action plan, following the pattern experienced by Defence Forces representation through the White Paper, climate survey, working time directive and high-level implementation plan for the pay commission.

Last week, this committee was told by the Secretary General and Chief of Staff about the new strategic framework for the Defence Forces and was advised that the Tánaiste has stated, “The priority within this transformation is cultural change above all else.” They advised that, in addition to the culture change, there are also transformation actions that will ensure the Defence Forces is an equal opportunities employer, is reflective of contemporary Irish society, provides a safe workplace and a fit-for-purpose organisation, is equipped to defend the State and meet the challenges of today and the future, and is an organisation where all members are treated with dignity and respect. We thoroughly endorse this ambition but this cultural change must include the senior management of the Department of Defence and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, whose dismissive and frustrating approach to our conciliation and arbitration scheme has manifested itself in a complete abuse of a dominant position.

We are engaging in a process of reviewing our conciliation and arbitration scheme and it is no exaggeration to say that, if real and meaningful change does not occur, then the scheme is, unfortunately, dead. The scope of representation is clearly laid down in Defence Forces regulations and should be understood by absolutely everyone. The manner in which senior management, both civil and, at times, military, have suppressed the employee voice in the organisation through a refusal to consult on matters that are clearly within scope is an extremely poor reflection on their attitude not just to representation in the Defence Forces but to every soldier, sailor, aircrew, non-commissioned officer and officer. There are many recent examples and it is only getting worse. This must change if the organisation is to survive and, ultimately, in time, thrive.

Normal public service employment conditions do not apply to those in the Defence Forces. Serving Defence Forces personnel forfeit normal employee status while remaining subject to military law at all times. They have no right to strike and can be called on 24-7, 365 days of the year. They have an unlimited liability contract which requires them to face hardship and danger for the benefit of others. Personnel are subject to mandatory early retirement and are subject to annual military standard medical and fitness testing. In recognition of these service restrictions and industrial relations limitations, defence management’s obligation should be to advocate strongly on behalf of Defence Forces personnel. What our members see is an ongoing failure to compensate us for our lack of fundamental employee rights and, in so doing, a failure to ensure the Defence Forces are not disadvantaged relative to other public service employees. Indeed, the inability of military personnel to withdraw labour has been exploited by an adversarial and dysfunctional industrial relations climate which has been to the detriment of the well-being of the most loyal citizens of this State.

Gandhi said “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members”. We willingly accept the restrictions on civil liberties that are part and parcel of military service, but this cannot be completely taken for granted by Government. Government should be compensating Defence Forces members for the unique nature of military service and the sacrifices members and their families make. Instead, the formerly well-recognised and beneficial aspects of military service that attracted and, most importantly, retained highly qualified and experienced personnel and which offset this lack of employment rights are being stripped away.

The most important key performance indicator and measure of whether employment policies and conditions of service are attractive and effective is the strength of the organisation. This is the one statistic that cannot be fudged and cannot be spun. At 80% of current establishment and 66% of required future establishment, the evidence is clear. The obsession with recruitment over retention is not working. It is time for real transformation, and that starts with changing the habit of a lifetime and listening to the employee voice rather than continuing to sideline it. This takes humility, self-awareness and real leadership and is badly needed. Government has within its power the ability to quickly remedy many of the retention difficulties being experienced by Óglaigh na hÉireann and to begin to rehabilitate this proud and loyal organisation. Small retention measures such as patrol duty allowance in the Naval Service, instructors allowance for people conducting induction training, supplementary pension for those recruited post 2013, and the recording of working time can be implemented in days but would have long-lasting benefits. It is for Government to decide whether we are finally going to take the security of our State seriously and resource and retain our Defence Forces personnel.

We thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for their time. We are happy to take questions.

Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. If nothing else, we should have learned by now that we are the only country, apart from Malta, that does not have a full-time Minister for Defence. You cannot run a Department one day a week or one day a month. It just cannot happen. I would say to Lieutenant Colonel King that this sounds like Groundhog Day, but Groundhog Day was the same every day whereas the situation here is getting worse every time we meet him.

I will briefly touch on the commission's targets. We are told that 95% of the recommendations have been completed but RACO is telling us they are not completed and that they are being discussed or considered or that negotiations are under way. We need to get an accurate figure as to exactly how many of the recommendations have been completed. That would be helpful to the committee.

The second thing I want to talk about is the pension. The Public Service Pensions (Single Scheme and Other Provisions) Act 2012 was introduced in the middle of a financial crisis. Anybody reading the Act will see there were very significant omissions from it and great neglect of special areas, such as the Defence Forces, where people have to retire long before the age of 65. This committee needs to bring the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands into the discussion on pensions because the pension for Defence Forces personnel is clearly wrong in every way and we are losing people because of that. It is sad to hear Lieutenant Colonel King talking about young officers.

What is the typical rank of a post-2013 officer who is leaving? Do he have any idea where they go after they leave because that is really important?

The issue of conciliation and arbitration has been a thorn in the side of RACO and PDFORRA. Where is conciliation and arbitration now? Has RACO got the level of access and is it getting decisions out of conciliation and arbitration? Whether they are favourable or not is not the issue. Is RACO getting into conciliation and arbitration and getting its voice heard?

The witnesses spoke about allowances. I am a bit confused about allowances. The Cathaoirleach will remember that we visited Haulbowline. We were shown three ratings, all of whom were doing the same job, were of the same rank and were on three different rates of pay, by the captain of one of the ships down there. I understand from a friend of mine that in the CIS section, there are officers working at the same level and doing the same job who are on different rates of pay. I am not sure how that arises and where the fix is. I am sure it is something that has come across RACO's table at some stage.

The chief of staff and the Secretary General appeared before this committee last week and the issue of pay came up. They said that a private soldier on completion of training is on €38,000 per year, which is not bad money for an 18 or 19-year-old. A second lieutenant coming out was on €42,000 per year. It sounded really great and anybody you speak to who heard that would say, "God they're really well paid". Nobody else in the public service of whom I am aware is expected to be available 24 hours a day seven days a week. That is the first point. It seems that at entry level, pay is not so bad but if you get up to the rank of sergeant, company sergeant, captain or commandant, it appears that the pay is not so great and there is no incentive to stay at that level. Could the witnesses address the issue of pay at that level?

I think we have to compare An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces. Lieutenant Colonel King made the point that when you sign up to the Defence Forces, you sign away a number of your civil rights, one of which is the right to withdraw labour. Deputy Berry has spoken time and again about the need for the Defence Forces to have access to the WRC and the Labour Court. Could Lieutenant Colonel King address that if he feels he can?

Regarding the working time directive, I asked last week if hours were being recorded for members of the Defence Forces and I was told they were. Either they are or are not being recorded or there is a pilot scheme but from talking to people outside the two representative bodies, I am fairly certain that nobody is recording anybody's hours and soldiers feel greatly aggrieved. Lieutenant Colonel King will know well that as the numbers fall, the recurring duties increase, which increases burnout and is the driver for people to get out of the system. Could he address those issues? The witnesses must forgive me as I have to leave as I have another thing on today.

Have the witnesses heard anything about those who are leaving the Defence Forces being treated very badly? Lump sums are not being paid for months and pensions are not coming through. I do not know if the witnesses have heard anything about it but if they have, they might address that. I thank the Cathaoirleach and my colleagues for letting me in.

Mr. Conor King:

Before I address the Senator's questions and in response to the Cathaoirleach, I agree that when we came before the committee in 2021, it was a bit pessimistic. We were frustrated but we were projecting hope regarding the Commission on the Defence Forces. Since then, the degree and pace of implementation have really concerned us. Back then, we had 8,580 people in the organisation. We now have 7,600. We are supposed to be going this way but we are going the other way, which shows that the policies are not working. We have given many solutions to our colleagues in the Department of Defence and our Ministers and we would like them to be engaged with.

Senator Craughwell asked about the Commission on the Defence Forces. When 95% is quoted as a figure that is completed, one must look at this plan, which is the high-level action plan entitled, Building for the future - Change from Within. If members have the time, they can scrutinise the language being used to frame these early actions. The language we see is "commence further evaluation of", "progress implementation", "commence examination of options", "commencement of measures" and "explore options". It is okay to say that we have completed the exploration or we have completed the commencement of the evaluation but to the layperson, does that mean that it is delivered and implemented? Certainly not to our members and we are not seeing it on the ground. I do not know how many of the early actions have been implemented but it certainly is not 95% - in terms of the language, perhaps, but in terms of delivery, absolutely not.

Mr. Martin Ryan:

When we consider the reports that come before Government, we must remember that the people who scrutinise them most are the internal members of the Defence Forces. That is the most worrying thing. When statistics like 95% are thrown out as confirmed, it gives the impression that all is good and all is progressing well when internally, the members do not feel that and do not see that. They know that this statement lacks credibility and that is a problem. This is something we have advised on before in terms of not using statistics that do not hold up internally. When you are reporting to committees here and reporting everywhere, the most important audience is the internal audience of the Defence Forces. They are hanging on every word. They are watching everything. That is how much they care about the organisation so when they hear things like that, it is hard to call them truisms.

Mr. Conor King:

Regarding the post-2013 pension, over 50% of our members are post-2013. This is the result of a number of factors such as the intense recruitment or induction into the cadet school between 2016 and 2019 where there were unprecedented levels - 100-person classes - that the school really was not equipped to deal with but dealt with as best it could and the rate of turnover, that is, the people who were leaving. The experienced people were leaving and the inexperienced people were coming in, which is the reason for almost 40% of all commissioned officers having five years commissioned service or less. When you have of a cohort of more than 50% that is telling you that the single pension scheme does not provide a viable pension to enable it to have a career, when you see that the Chief of Staff has recognised this and told the Pensions Commission about it and when you have gardaí, firefighters, people working in the national ambulance service and prison officers all saying that they cannot have a viable career in those front-line uniformed services, something is wrong and we have to listen and see what the problem is.

It is quite clear. It is the supplementary pension. A supplementary pension facility was available to uniformed fast accrual and front-line personnel up to December 2012. That gave people the option to stay in the organisation and progress up through the ranks safe in the knowledge that they would have a modest income at the end of their service life be it 40 years if you came in as an 18-year-old or 20-year-old. You are actually forced to retire. People say that one size fits all. You are talking about one size fits all when you are talking about a single pension scheme. It is one size fits all for that policy but for mandatory retirement, it is completely different so we cannot just judge people on a one-size-fits-all basis if it is not one size fits all across the board.

Senator Craughwell asked where people are going. They are going to lots of places and are going for different reasons with the principal one being the pension. They are also leaving because of work-life balance, certainty and predictability. We see a lot of our captain members going to the Civil Service and into Government Departments where they can serve until 70 years of age and get a full pension, where they have a predictability of service and generally have a nine to five job, where they are not posted overseas or anywhere around the country on a whim and where mobility exists but on their terms and not the organisation's terms.

Captain Bray is a member of our post-2013 cohort. Would Captain Bray like to come in on that?

Mr. Jamie Bray:

I was in the first class that joined post-2013. I joined ten years ago now in September 2013. By way of example, I joined at 20 years of age. If I serve my entire career there, I will be kicked out of the organisation at 58 years of age because that is the mandatory retirement age. My pension will be approximately €25,000 at that stage. If the Defence Forces want to increase the mandatory retirement age, that will not change anything. Since it is based on career average earnings, it is the case that it will probably add an extra €1,000 to €2,000 maximum if they increase the pension age. The system does not work to allow people to just keep on increasing their age. If that is the case, I may as well keep increasing my age to build up enough of a pension that I can live off, which would mean I will have to keep working until the age of 70 or so, which does not make it fast accrual.

The Senator asked about the rank at which people are leaving. Since I was the first class on the rank of captain, there will be no one above the rank of captain. The maximum rank at which anyone can leave at the moment will be captain or lieutenant. That is quite a short career before a person decides to leave, which is quite disheartening.

Mr. Conor King:

With regard to the Air Corp, it is slightly different in relation to flying pay because the single pension scheme is based on career average earnings and pensionable earnings. If we look at, for example, an Army officer or someone in the Defence Forces in the Army in the enlisted ranks, it is very difficult to calculate. Certainly, however, we have calculated that someone serving a full career as an Army officer at the moment will be going out on a pension of approximately €17,000. That then means that people must wait from their mandatory retirement age until the State pension age to get the value of the State pension to get an income together. People ask, "Can you not get another job?" If a person has put 40 years into a public service organisation, he or she should not have to. Thequid pro quofor forced early retirement is overseas service, the robust and physical nature of the organisation and the posting anytime, anywhere. That is the retention carrot that keeps people in, and if it is being done away with then, really, it has to be compensated in some other way and we do not see it at the moment.

Mr. Martin Ryan:

A stark reminder again is that the statistic is 79% of post-2013 entrants do not see a viable career option due to the pension. This is the problem of today, yes, but it is very much the problem of the future. As we wait another five or ten years to deal with this, and as Lieutenant Colonel King rightly alluded to, it is primarily across all fast accruals and full-time services. We cannot say we were not warned on this. Let us not be surprised in years to come when it becomes an epidemic and we can keep no one in these front-line services. The committee has been told here today and it has been told in the past.

Mr. Conor King:

It has often been described as a tomorrow problem, 20 years down the line. We do not want people to break their psychological contract. We want to give them that north star to work towards that gives them the chance to have a long-term career in an organisation like the Defence Forces. Studies have shown that once a person decides to or thinks about leaving, he or she is as good as gone. Certainly, we see the certainty and predictability in other areas of the public service, in particular, the Civil Service and other public sector bodies or other uniformed services. People are going to the likes of the Prison Service and An Garda Síochána, which are also difficult jobs but which have more certainty and predictability. They have the ability to get overtime and a better work-life balance. That will not really exist in the Defence Forces until the working time directive is brought in.

The Senator mentioned the conciliation and arbitration scheme and asked where it is. The scheme exists and it has potential to be really good. However, we have to remember that because the Defence Forces is different from the majority of other public sector organisations in that we cannot withdraw labour, and that is a key weakness in terms of industrial relations - let us call a spade a spade - the conciliation and arbitration scheme has to be strong and robust. It cannot be undermined ever. We have witnessed over the last number of years systemic undermining of conciliation and arbitration through, for example, the absence for a year and a half of a third-party adjudicator to the current absence of an arbitration board because it ran out of time, through breaches of Defence Force Regulations S.6, which underpin representation and the scope of representation. When people do not have confidence in the only avenue they have then, yes, we have to start looking at other measures like the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, and Labour Court that will bind Government to decisions. Let us not forget that conciliation and arbitration scheme findings are not legally binding either. It seems like we have a pretty weak system there, particularly when it is not adhered to.

The official side in the conciliation and arbitration scheme comprises the Department of Defence, Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and military management. Quite often, we sense a tension whereby the Department of Defence is trying to get answers from the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform but they are not forthcoming, and items stay on the agenda for months and months with no updates and no accountability. That is a serious problem for us. I wrote to the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform two weeks ago to complain about some of the lack of engagement from his officials. That is on the record.

With regard to the allowances, the Senator spoke about Haulbowline. I will pass over to Lieutenant Commander Cian O’Mearain, who might also talk about the patrol duty allowance.

Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

Yes, indeed, I was speaking to the officer who briefed me on that this week. There could easily be three sailors on a ship on three different allowances depending on whether they have sufficient days to qualify for the seafarers' tax credit, whether they are in or out of the sea service commitment scheme and whether they can get enough days to qualify for that, which, through no fault of their own, is now becoming a problem as ships are taken offline. People who have signed up for the scheme and are available to go to sea cannot gain the benefit of it because some cannot get to sea. Then, there is the basic patrol duty allowance. It is a recommendation of the commission that they be rationalised into one allowance. We hope that is going to happen but it has not happened yet.

With regard to comments that were made in this committee last week, we are aware of what other members of the public service get for similar duties. Whatever quantum is arrived at with the patrol duty allowance, it has got to be such that it gives us the feeling that we are equally valued to those colleagues in the public service. That is what I would say on the patrol duty allowance.

There was a question on the rate 2 communications and information services officers, CIS, officers.

Mr. Conor King:

CIS officers or cyber experts are people who basically keep the lights on but also have our cybersecurity as their primary role. We have had an anomaly in our establishment for a number of years now, which can be traced it back ten or 15 years but it needs to be addressed, whereby approximately one third to one half of all our CIS technical officers who are technically qualified and doing technical jobs are receiving technical pay. That is simply because of an inadequate establishment. That has been made clear in submissions by RACO to the Public Service Pay Commission, PSPC, the high-level implementation plan for the PSPC and to the Commission on the Defence Forces. However, those recommendations and submissions have not been heeded. The consequence of that is a very high attrition rate of technical officers in the CIS corps. It is quite simple. It costs a nice bit of money to qualify and train a cyber expert. They will find multiples of their salary in the private sector. We need to spend a little bit to save a lot in that regard. It is a glaring anomaly that has not been addressed and really needs to be addressed. We know the value of cybersecurity. We have experienced attacks on our HSE. We know that hybrid threats are everywhere with regard to cybersecurity and we cannot be complacent. It starts with valuing and retaining the experts we have within our staff.

Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I will cut in for one second. I attended an intelligence and security forum in London that involved people from the American side - Senators and Congressmen - and politicians from all over Europe. The word used about the Irish Defence Forces was "horrified". They were horrified at the weakened state of our eastern flank, as the Americans put it and as the Europeans put it, our western flank. There is a gaping hole in the western Atlantic and that gaping hole is Ireland. Everybody at that conference was talking about it. Indeed, I was asked if I would go to Washington and brief Senators on the situation in the Irish Defence Forces. We are really not taking this seriously.

We are buying nice new machines and things. Today we find radar will not be delivered until 2028. This is total nonsense.

Mr. Conor King:

On the question of whether pay is adequate, a good lot of work has been done by the Departments of Defence and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on new interim pay. That is acknowledged and is very welcome. However, it is impossible to make a value judgment on the appropriateness or fairness of pay when we do not know how many hours people are working.

We must remember that a cadetship is almost two years long. It takes 19 or 20 months and is very difficult. A cadet is on €20,000 a year, not €41,000. For two years, that level of pay contributes to career average earnings and pension. We have to think strategically. After two years, a cadet has a good salary for a new entrant but they are working a 40-hour week, whereas the public service average is about 37.5 hours per week. We talk about a 40-hour week. In reality, we have people working 50, 60 and, in some cases, 80 hours a week. That has been borne out by studies conducted by the association and its membership, which have largely been absent from the official side. We have the data because we conducted longitudinal studies over 17 weeks, which is the reference period for the working time directive. The period involved was not shorter; that was the minimum. A pay rate of €37,000 for a private on completion of his or her training and €41,000 or €42,000 for a second lieutenant on completion of his cadetship of 19 or 20 months seems very generous, provided it is for a 40-hour week, which it is not.

Mr. Martin Ryan:

What compensates for the additional time worked, in particular if people are doing duties, are security duty allowances which are well documented and are not fit for purpose. If we take an eight-hour working day as being the recognised average working day, the extra 16 hours worked on that duty attract an allowance of €56 before tax, which works out to about €1.60 per hour. I have heard some committee members speak about this. That is the reality. That is what people are getting for going above and beyond their normal working day and week. That has severe impacts. The frequency of duty is once a week, twice a month or whatever it might be. There is a rest day afterwards, but that has an impact in terms of capability and training. People do not have soldiers or officers at their disposal to do normal working days. They are taken away from their place of employment. When we ask about where people are, this is what we mean.

Mr. Conor King:

The Senator asked about the working time directive and hours being recorded. To my knowledge, hours are not being recorded in the organisation. Do not take my word for it. Ms Colclough is a unit commander.

Ms Amy Colclough:

We have a time and attendance system. We can record who is in on a daily basis, but how many hours are worked on a certain day is not something that is being recorded. We cannot define what a working week is because with duties that is 24 hours straight off the bat. The chances are someone is going over 37 hours if he or she does one duty a week. Most privates are on at least one a week. We are recording that they did that 24-hour duty but our system does not record how many hours they worked that week.

Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent)
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Days are being recorded but hours are not.

Ms Amy Colclough:

Yes.

Mr. Conor King:

It is not a difficult thing to record working time. In fact, the Government has defined the working day and working week in submissions to Europe, benchmarking bodies and the Gleeson commission in 1990 as, typically, a 40-hour week. Even though 33 years have passed since the Gleeson commission, we still do not have a time recording system in place. It boggles the mind if we think about it. We are used to it, but if we step back for a moment we can draw a line from the failure to record working time to the failure to provide appropriate rates of pay for additional hours worked.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I apologise for interrupting. My questions relate primarily to the working time directive. It is a good segue. I was conscious reading the statement earlier that we are all aware of A Tale of Two Cities. What the committee has had over the past week is a tale of two virtually parallel worlds, one that was presented by the Department last week which was a tale of great progress, stabilisation and advancement and another presented by RACO which suggested that the only thing which has really changed is the strength of the organisation, and not for the better. That is stark language to use and stands in stark contrast to what we were told by the Department last week.

Unfortunately, from the Department's point of view the indicators used to adjudicate these things are stacked very much in support of the suggestions RACO has made today. Under the best case scenario presented to us for 2023, more people will leave the Defence Forces this year than will join. If that continues for a decade or more, we will be on the wrong side of where we need to be.

Last week, the Department mentioned a number of times the objective to stabilise. Stabilisation was mentioned a number of times. I was struck by the fact that if we send any team out hoping for a draw, more often than not the team will lose. That is not the type of vision or ambition that is required.

The witnesses may be able to answer a question I have which the Department could not answer last week. Assuming that we are now at crisis point, at what point does this become an emergency or existential crisis? We are now at 7,600. At what point will we say that we do not have a Defence Forces or one that is capable of doing what we expect of such a force? With due respect to the Senator, America's east flank or Europe's western flank are not relevant. This is about our national strategic interest. When do we reach a tipping point?

Every single member of the Defence Forces I have spoken to, past and present, has told me that the game changer is the working time directive. That is when we get to a point that members of the Defence Forces feel valued and appreciated and that the political system has listened to what current and thousands of former members have said. When we are talking about a retention crisis, is it correct to say that the biggest single retention initiative that could be taken is the implementation of the working time directive?

We heard political commitments last week in the Dáil. It is difficult to understand how we see what appear to be rationales for further delays. Last week, we were essentially told that there is no costing on the implementation of the working time directive. I do not know how a Department can have an ambition to deliver something without being costed.

We also heard that there will be a need for a legislative change, but no real timeframe. Does RACO have any experience from other member states? Some European states, including Germany and Sweden, implemented the directive. What was the process involved? Are there lessons we could learn from that?

I was struck by a comment in an opening statement, "The Department and the Minister do not appear to think us worthy of participating in a collective agreement on implementation". Could RACO elaborate on that? Perhaps the witnesses could cite what they think is an appropriate mechanism for a collective agreement to be arranged and an appropriate role for the organisation and PDFORRA to play. That would be very useful.

The witnesses touched on the pension scheme and articulated very well the impact the 2013 reforms had. Could they outline whether there has been engagement with the Department in respect of reverting to the former position, for the reasons they have outlined?

Is there a cost associated with that?

Recognising that other members will come in and the time, I have just two questions. The conciliation and arbitration scheme was touched on with the Senator. It is eminently sensible that when dealing with the industrial relations framework the Defence Forces have to operate in, there would be a conciliation and arbitration scheme that is robust, flexible when it needs to be, very clear and operational all the time. I understand there were different elements of that scheme that basically became dysfunctional because people were not in place at different times. I know there is discussion on a review of that. What does that review need to find at the end of the day?

In respect of the operational capacity of the Defence Forces, as the witnesses mentioned and I think this committee acknowledged last week, what we saw off the coast last week shows how brilliantly this State can be serviced when our Defence Forces are provided with any level of resources. The operation was world class, yet it operated in suboptimal circumstances due to capacity and otherwise. We have heard much discussion around engagement with EU battle groups, for example. That has come at a cost because we are withdrawing from the Golan Heights UN mission, which I think is regrettable. Regarding the organisational capacity difficulties that were outlined, what do RACO members think about our agreement at EU and other levels to sign up to multilateral or EU-wide initiatives while we are dealing with deficiencies in the numbers domestically? One of the witnesses’ colleagues described it to me as a vanity project in some respects, where Government is signing up to initiatives at EU level without recognising the serious crisis and deficiencies in place within the forces here. I welcome any comments on that.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I will only be out for perhaps ten minutes.

Mr. Conor King:

The Deputy spoke about stabilisation of numbers and when something is a crisis. Probably taking criticism in 2019 before this esteemed committee, we said we are in a state of crisis. In 2021, we would have repeated it. I think we have to call it a retention catastrophe at this stage. When does a crisis become more than a crisis? When it intensifies.

I refer to stabilising around 7,600 when we know the Commission on the Defence Forces tells us we have to aim for 11,500 to provide a minimum credible deterrent or a minimum credible operational capability to defend the State and deliver our roles assigned in the White Paper. If we are stabilising around a suboptimal number, we are then admitting things are not working. Therefore, we have to think about what will work and stop ignoring the employee voice and the people on the ground who have suggestions. They can make constructive suggestions and point out the likes of the working time directive. The Deputy is correct that it is the single greatest retention measure that could ever be implemented.

Before I forget about the working time directive, we organised a conference on it in 2018 when we were still being locked out of talks and the Department refused to talk to us on it. We organised a conference and brought in experts from the German armed forces, called the Bundeswehr, people in from the Swedish armed forces, legal experts and members of An Garda Síochána who, in 2012, negotiated a working time agreement with their Commissioner and the Department of Justice. The Garda has certainty. Without commenting on current issues, we would love to be in a position where we had a dispute over working time or rosters because we are so far away from it.

Regarding the point at which it becomes an existential crisis, do not take my word for it. I will pass it on to Lieutenant Commander O’Mearain on the Naval Service.

Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

As the Deputy is aware, we have two ships at sea – that is two crews. Looking at the Government decision for the level of ambition, LOA, 2, that is 18 crews at sea and another 18 crews ashore on their shore time getting ready to go back to sea. That gives the Deputy an indication of the delta between where we are and where we want to be in five years. Some of those people take between five and ten years to train, so the likelihood of them being here in five years is fairly small. That is a gap.

We will not comment on operational issues but there is just such a difference between where we are and where we think we need to be as a country. If you wished to characterise that as having failed to achieve our ambition, you could.

To link this into other things, the Deputy asked about the working time directive and whether it is a game-changer. It is very much part of unlocking this puzzle, and patrol duty allowance is an element. Establishing any kind of number or limit on the labour hours budget we can work towards would be a start in unlocking this. Other states regularly do this. There are multiple different methods we have seen from other countries for how this is achieved. It can be achieved. There are small moves to it in respect of proposals for additional time off in lieu for time at sea next year, and that is welcomed and will make a difference. However, what will really prove to people they can have their time off is when there is a second crew ready to take the ship and they know they will not be called, because once you are the crew, you own it 24-7.

Mr. Martin Ryan:

On numbers and where we go, first and foremost, we are continuously told that people are the number one capability and I think everyone would be in agreement on that. However, we are now probably approaching a stage given our deficiencies in strength where if the taps were turned on in the morning in terms of recruitment and we had many applicants and tried to bring people in, I do not think we would have sufficient numbers or the ability to train a large number. We get to the following stage. Could the size of the organisation actually be increased by 500 or 1,000 a year if everything else such as retention measures was sorted and in order? That is a serious question we will have to ask. I do not know if it could. In addition, every single capability the Defence Forces has or states it has is impacted by our strength. That was evident last week.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I asked about the conciliation and arbitration scheme and the battle groups.

Mr. Conor King:

On the battle group, from our perspective, it is a policy matter. The commitment of the battle group supersedes the commitment for UNDOF. One overseas mission with high intensity and high tempo is being removed for a battle group, surrounding which there is an awful lot of uncertainty. When I say there is uncertainty, both we and PDFORRA have sought details on the human factors of the battle group. Will allowances be paid? What will the time off be? It is simple stuff but we have not received those responses. We cannot then go to our members and tell them to go for the battle group and volunteer. We have to remain silent because we have no information. Unless there is an attractive incentive to sign up for a two-year commitment in the battle group, they will not. Currently, people do not know whether they will get leave, they cannot go overseas and they do not know whether they can do career or any sort of skills courses in that time. They may be deployed overseas for a minimum of six weeks and, possibly, if the battle group deploys, it could be a number of months. Unless people know that simple yet extremely important information, they cannot be incentivised to jump on board. I think it will be difficult to fill that without the information. However, I cannot comment on the appropriateness of us getting involved in those structures.

On the collective agreement, it is described to us as very technical but, to me, it is quite simple.

We sign up to the public service stability agreements every couple of years. We are about to negotiate another one as associate members of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. That is a collective agreement. We are already involved in collective agreements, yet when we asked for a collective agreement like that which An Garda Síochána has, whose members have largely the same status as us in terms of employee rights, we were told, “No, you are not a trade union so you cannot have a collective agreement.” That is very disheartening because it is reliant on legislation from 1942, 50 years before the advent of representation in the Defence Forces. When we are told there is a problem with legislation and for that reason a collective agreement cannot be laid out or developed, we feel it is reasonable to ask whether we can amend the legislation to allow us to have a collective agreement and be able to get behind the implementation of something that will affect every single one of our members, sell it to the members and bring it along. It is organisational change 101.

The Deputy asked had there been engagement on the pension issue. There has been engagement with Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform following a long campaign to try to get in the door. Unfortunately, the door was quite firmly shut in our faces by saying this was a policy decision to save money for the Exchequer and that, really, we were no different from the rest of the public sector. There is an interdepartmental working group ongoing but we have been told it is not looking at supplementary pension for fast accruals. It is looking at the expansion of the mandatory retirement age. We were told the extension of the mandatory retirement age for our members would be looked at in 2017-2018. We are still waiting on that. Every year or month that goes by, those who have stayed until the mandatory retirement age are being forced to leave the organisation. An early decision on that would be helpful for people’s family lives and their future in the organisation.

I was asked what the review of the conciliation and arbitration scheme needs to find. I will not prejudge what a review of a scheme needs to find. All I can say is that there are obvious drawbacks to the scheme as it currently exists. We have an excellent independent chair but he is not able to play a key interventionist role as he is supposed to. We need an annual report on progress or lack thereof. This is basic stuff. It is simple things like minutes of meetings and independent secretarial support because, unfortunately, the dominant position of the official side has been used to, perhaps, influence the secretary of the conciliation and arbitration scheme to not pass on information that we would have said was within the auspices of the scheme. I will say no more because we are in the middle of a review and I would not like to prejudice its outcome.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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RACO has sent the committee a lot of information on the voluntary retirement scheme and the Amárach Research member survey. I thank the witnesses for that and thank Mr. O’Mearain for his opening statement. I join colleagues in congratulating the members who were involved in the event last week off the coast. I recognise the skill and courage they showed. It was a dangerous operation on the seas by the Naval Service, the Rangers and the airmen involved. I thank them for that through our guests.

Last week, we were told of a proposal to amalgamate the seagoing tax credit, the seagoing commitment scheme and so on. What is Mr. O’Mearain’s understanding of that and how it might work?

Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

The patrol duty allowance at the moment is a daily rate. There is a seagoing tax credit for a person who qualifies for the requisite number of days at sea in a calendar year. It is open to some people whose seagoing pattern suits the tax year. Other people will do as many days, but if they fall in a different pattern, they do not get it. The sea service commitment scheme is an opt-in scheme. Again, you must do your sea days in a particular pattern. Someone could do the required number of days in the required amount of time but not in the right slots and not qualify. All these things are issues that make them very difficult to manage. If someone is sent to sea on a relief for two weeks at short notice, he or she will only get the basic PDA. That person will not be in the hat for either of the other two. All these things add to the frustration and confusion about what is a day at sea.

Before going into what we would like to see, I will return to the Deputy’s kind comments on the exercise last week. That exercise shows the professionalism of the members of the Defence Forces and the positive aspects of the Defence Forces culture. It is important we say that here. What we understand is happening is a calculation is being arrived at on the quantum of what each of the three elements combined would be. That calculation can depend on how many days are counted to qualify for each of those, so different calculations could be done. What we would like to see is a rate of PDA that is in the range of what other Government agencies get, that is, not less than what anyone else gets. That is ultimately what we would like to see.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Last week, I asked a question about the number of personnel on the seagoing commitment scheme. The Secretary General told me there were 32 applications approved in January 2022. What does that mean from RACO’s point of view?

Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

My understanding is, to the end of 2021, approximately a little over 100 people had applied. What I think is being said there is that 32 people have managed to qualify for the full payment. Again, that is related to the complexity of it and due to time and attendance recording systems. This is all being done on spreadsheets because we do not have a centralised system to record it. It is quite labour intensive to record it. There may be others who have qualified who are awaiting payments. They can take a while to come through because, again, they all have to be manually checked. I imagine that 32 figure is the number of people who, in the four years of the scheme, achieved the full amount of time.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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The Secretary General did say she was hopeful they would come to a conclusion in the coming weeks. Is that Mr. O’Mearain’s sense?

Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

From what I understand, that means the process of wrapping the three into one will potentially come to a conclusion in the next number of weeks. Again, no one in the Naval Service is involved in these discussions.

Mr. Martin Ryan:

The seagoing commitment scheme is an example of the introduction of something that could have been positive and should have been a good news story but it was done without consultation. The obvious people to talk to before introducing such a scheme are the representative associations. They will point out the pitfalls and anomalies. It is all well and good working something out, but if you do not speak to the end user, it can be flawed from the outset, as it seems this may be have been.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I am quite confused about the thing. It is not easy to get my head around it. I understand what the representatives are saying.

Last week, I also asked about retention payments. I was told it is not working so well in America. Have retention payments been mentioned in RACO’s discussion at any stage? What is its view on it? I am thinking about someone committing to stay on for a certain number of years and getting a payment each year for the number of years they stay on.

Mr. Conor King:

The likes of a bounty, or whatever it is colloquially called in different armed forces, is something on which we have made a very detailed and costed submission. I do not have it to hand but I can send it to the Deputy afterwards.

As I said earlier, we were invited to make submissions on the various projects of the high-level implementation plan, one of which was termed incentivised long-service arrangements, which does exactly what it says on the tin. That submission, which was fully costed and took some months to put together, seems to have gone into a black hole. We got no feedback on it and we had no visibility on the final report, despite seeking it through a freedom of information request. We received a polite refusal. That is really frustrating when we are trying to help and come up with constructive solutions based on the subject matter experts within our membership who tell us what it takes to retain personnel.

Regarding other retention schemes, the Air Corps has a retention scheme that Captain Bray might speak about.

Mr. Jamie Bray:

Yes. The Air Corps has what is called a service commitment scheme for pilots when they reach 12 years. When a pilot is commissioned, they get a 12-year contract, so when they are fully qualified they must sign on for 12 years. When the pilot finishes that 12 years, they will now be offered a service commitment scheme where they will receive an annual payment of approximately €20,000 plus they can sign on for a further three years, five years, or eight years. If they wish to leave during the period they signed on for they will have to pay that money back. If they stay for the full set they keep the money. The service commitment scheme was introduced at the start of Covid-19 and it was deemed really successful because everybody signed on as there were no jobs. No one was leaving the organisation. Since Covid-19 finished we have seen a greater number of pilots leave the organisation again, so I do not know how successful it has been in the most recent year or two. The scheme should be expanded not just to pilots, but to air traffic controllers, technicians and Army and Naval Service personnel as well. However, this has not been done - it just applies to pilots.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Captain Bray is saying that even with this payment in place, we still see fairly high attrition.

Mr. Jamie Bray:

Yes.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Other factors that were mentioned such as quality of life and so on come into to play, along with the pension issue that was discussed earlier.

Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

Could I add to that? Although the US authorities may have said that this is not the major factor, they did not say that they do not pay them. They pay substantial bonuses. What one must remember is the US social context. There are other reasons people join the military - for healthcare and to get a college education. In the absence of those drivers here, we need to look elsewhere.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I will be brief. I have only two more questions. The witnesses also gave us a paper - we have it here - about their survey of voluntary retired officers from 2020 to 2022. In the paper there is quite a lot with respect to people returning to the Defence Forces and the first-line Reserve and so forth. According to this paper, 14% of those surveyed had applied for the first-line Reserve and 80% had not. When asked whether they would apply for it now, 53% said "No" and 47% said "Yes". Quite a high percentage would like to go back in and contribute to the Reserve but obviously it is not being used at all from what I can see. Would the witnesses like to comment on that?

Mr. Conor King:

If used correctly, the first-line Reserve and the second-line Reserve would be a fantastic tool to augment the Defence Forces and to ensure the skills, knowledge and capabilities that have been built up over a number of years are not lost to the organisation. The first-line Reserve withered on the vine somewhat over recent years. I know the Naval Service used it and maybe Lieutenant Commander O’Mearain can expand on that in a minute. However, I also know that many of our recently retired members who applied for the first-line Reserve had not heard anything back from it. To the credit of the Department of Defence, once we got involved and started making queries, the application process did speed up. We should up our game as an organisation in relation to exit interviews and exit surveys to find out why people are leaving and what would entice them to stay. At the point of retirement - the exit point - the option of signing up for the first-line Reserve should absolutely be put on the table, if it has not been already. I am not sure whether it has. Does Lieutenant Commander O’Mearain want to talk about the first-line Reserve for the Naval Service?

Mr. Cian O'Mearain:

Yes, there have been very positive experiences of it. Essentially, Permanent Defence Force officers who were retiring were going into the first-line Reserve and coming back every year for a number of weeks. For a long time it was how we managed summer leave periods. The first-line Reserve came back to smooth out that pinch point. During the financial crisis it was just dropped. There was no change in regulation; just no sanction to bring people up any more. We now have three officers in the Naval Service who are on the first-line Reserve. One of the projects on the strategic framework - the delivery of the Naval Service Reserve motor launches - is being managed on a day-to-day basis by a first-line Reserve officer who is called up on an ad hocbasis. When a task comes in, we phone him and he comes and does the work. It is recorded in the personnel management system, and it works.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I have a final question. It has been said to us more than once - the witnesses alluded to this - that we are beyond full employment. It is a term I heard last week. We are all inundated with people contacting us from the private sector saying that they cannot get workers. When they look at the Defence Forces they see a cadre of highly trained, highly disciplined, very able people and they decide straight away to reach out and see if they can attract them. Will the witnesses comment on that as an issue? I met a senior executive of a multinational company last week who told me that there are 240 open vacancies on their books and they are screaming for people, such as people from the Defence Forces. I have heard anecdotally that in some instances a person who joins a private sector company can get a bounty if they can attract a colleague from the Defence Forces to join as well. I am not sure whether that is true. Maybe it is an urban myth; I do not know. Will the witnesses comment on whether they encounter those kinds of pressures from the private sector seeking to pull people from the Defence Forces at all levels? Captain Bray mentioned pilots who would be highly sought after and highly trained as well. I know there are people with all kinds of skills, and people with no skills, who have the training, discipline and loyalty and are highly sought after. Will Lieutenant Colonel King comment on that?

Mr. Conor King:

I will comment on that. I might then pass over to Commandant Ryan and Captain Bray in turn. Regarding the private sector and the public sector, I quoted Richard Branson earlier about training people so that they can leave but treating them so that they do not want to. We train people extremely well. As they are very highly trained, highly educated, well-disciplined, generally upstanding citizens, they are attractive. However, we cannot just say that full employment is the reason we are not retaining people, given that we have not put the hygiene factors in place that are actually stimulating retention. The incentivised long service arrangements that disappeared, the long service increments that were talked about in the commission, the working time directive and the post-2013 pension are examples of factors contributing to the retention issue. We always heard about the Defence Forces and the rest of the public sector, particularly with regard to the uniform fast accrual, that they had a great pension and good job security. When those things are removed and other things are not changed, there is a problem. Will Commandant Ryan comment?

Mr. Martin Ryan:

It was a somewhat convenient reason that was given. We have had retention issues, arguably for the last nine or ten years, in various forms. We need to get back to being an employer of choice. That is the thing. People are looking in and are not choosing the Defence Forces for a variety of reasons, most of which Lieutenant Colonel King alluded to. To be honest, if we get to the stage where people are happy and feel valued within the organisation, that is the greatest recruiting tool of all because they will recommend a career in the Defence Forces to those outside. When we look at our members currently - we have a survey ongoing that Lieutenant Colonel King alluded to - we see that more than 50% of our members would only recommend a career in the zero to ten-year bracket because that is all they see. It is because of the pension issues and various other issues, including the lack of value in terms of their working time. It is all coupled so when we talk about full employment, it is a rather convenient reason. To hang everything on that is a bit disingenuous, to be honest.

Mr. Jamie Bray:

Lieutenant Colonel King spoke about training people so well without attracting them to stay. That is exactly what we are seeing in the Naval Service and the Air Corps. We now have approximately 33% of technicians in the hangars in the Air Corps. We are training them really well but nothing is being done to try to keep them. When the pharma companies out there look at these highly trained individuals with technical minds, they are cleaned up. The Deputy mentioned the rumours of "bring your friend with you". We hear the same rumours as well. Members are going.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Is that right?

Mr. Jamie Bray:

On the aviation side, there are airlines that are cleaning up with pilots and constantly hiring and recruiting them. The Defence Forces just cannot compete with them, wages wise.

Ms Amy Colclough:

Many of my post-2013 peers are moving into the Civil Service because they will have a longer career and their pay starts at a higher level.

Even though they are still in the same pension bracket, their core pay is higher starting off. They are guaranteed to work until they are 70 but their pay level is higher and so the person with the average pension is better off. Quite a few people are moving across. At one stage, it was Aldi and now everyone is moving into the Civil Service.

Mr. Conor King:

When we consider an example or a comparison between commissioned officer grades, which we represent, and Civil Service grades we are always told that a captain is a higher executive officer. That is based on pay grades but when we see our captains leaving and going into the Civil Service, they are going in as assistant principal officers. Some of them who went in as assistant principal officers, which is a lieutenant colonel grade have been promoted since to principal officer. Recently departed captains are principal officers in the Civil Service, which is no slight on the Civil Service, but it is a really good indicator of how sought after and how well trained our members are, and how we need to just do a little bit to retain them and save a lot.

Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)
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I welcome our guests. The general public got a wake-up call and an alert to the significance of our Defence Forces, and specifically our Naval Service, last week. That was good thing. It certainly is the case for some background. I wish to congratulate - as we all would - the personnel involved there.

There may be an element of repetition in my questioning now as a lot of the points have been made, but I propose to still continue because we all want to indicate our support and I want to explore areas of it.

It is clear that the Defence Forces have a real issue with recruitment and retention. The figures given by the witnesses show they are down to 7,671 on August 2023, which the witnesses said is 79% of the original. It is stark and it is a declining figure. Before I talk about retention, last week it emerged that the recruitment campaign currently in place is quite defective in a number of ways, is not high profile enough and is not placed enough in schools and so on. I believe it was Commandant Martin Ryan who said here that the best recruitment of all by a long shot is word of mouth, with happy personnel telling friends and family. Nothing substitutes for that. It is the absence of this that is really the problem. It works in every sector when people speak well of something. Nothing substitutes for word of mouth. I was involved in the retail sector in the past and no advertising campaign substitutes for good word of the service and so on. Commandant Ryan is absolutely right that therein lies the problem. That is related to all the other issues.

Among the reasons around the retention is obviously and as the witnesses have said the non-implementation of the working time directive, despite the commission recommendation. There has been no real progress there. This is important. It is important people have a level of certainty for their family life. People nowadays have a different set of expectations. I notice it in my own young family: their expectations of what they should have are very different from mine. Young people now expect a quality of life and certainly around time. There is not even a recording process and the Defence Forces is not implementing the EU law so there is a real problem there. We will try to advance that I presume, in co-operation with the Chair, and bring that to the Minister. As the Chair said in his introductory remarks, we will have to be very vigilant here. We will try to advance that and bring into focus the whole question of that part of it, and the others as well. Obviously that is critical to retention and quality of life, along with the word-of-mouth factor that Commandant Ryan spoke about.

In the context of retention, my colleague, Deputy Stanton, who has had to leave, raised a point that might crack it and solve it. The forces have made proposals and nothing has been done. Am I correct in my understanding that they have not even been responded to? If there was retention pay and incentives for long service that would work and that would get over the retention issues to a fair degree, coupled with other lifestyle issues. I believe this should be the case.

I put it to the Chair that we should speak to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance,Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach and perhaps to the Minister for Finance on the whole question of pensions from our perspective. I propose that for consideration. There is a problem with the whole State pension scheme. It is clearly not satisfactory for the Defence Forces. What came in during 2013 was an emergency response at a particular time and set of circumstances. The real issue at that time was retiring senior civil servants were reappearing in the service and having another income. There was a level of public outcry given there was a recession then. It was an emergency response to that. The pension situation needs a review. The finance committee and our committee need to review it. Maybe we should delve a bit more into it and get a greater understanding here. We should also be speaking to the Minister for Finance. I will leave that to the Chair and the clerk of the committee to see what we can do there. I certainly believe we need this, and I request the Chair to please look at that because it is an issue we should progress and could do a lot with. The very fact of us exploring it in public sessions would give the issue oxygen, which it needs.

As well as the pension, we need to look at rostering and certainty in timetabling, along with retention and pay. Those are the three major areas to explore and where we should assist. The Chair's comments at the outset are absolutely correct and come from his own ministerial experience. It behoves us to start monitoring and to start checking. This is why I suggest the interaction with the finance committee and other interactions. We must keep up periodic conversations with these people to see that we are monitoring and that we are getting a result. We should be doing that.

On the public perception, of course it is inherently wrong and beyond acceptable - needless to say - that there would be any issue of discrimination or any malpractice on gender grounds. Of course that is beyond and should not even be a subject for discussion or debate as it is a given. Not one of the five witnesses would dispute this. The entire Women of Honour situation, coupled with all these other issues - although not a substitute to dealing with the other substantive matters - has created an image issue, which would damage recruitment and it is a problem. In a perverse sense, it makes it all the more essential that we deal with the other issues. It needs to be dealt with. I am aware the witnesses are as anxious as anyone else in that regard. The whole area around the Women of Honour issue is very serious for the people outside these walls looking at it.

The events of last weekend have already been raised here - and I am sorry for the repetition - but it is important that we all state our support for the Defence Forces and where we stand on the issues. Last week I raised the issue of the retired members of the Permanent Defence Force, PDF, being able to be recruited into the Reserve Defence Force at the particular grade or officer level they left the PDF. This is an important issue and perhaps the witnesses will comment on that.

I appreciate that my queries contained a level repetition but the witnesses may notice that in all our contributions, there is a commitment to do something about it. I hope the Chair and the clerk of the committee propose some actions later as to how we could monitor this and stay on top of it.

It is shocking if we are told one week, as Deputy Carthy said at the outset, that the commission report is being implemented with gusto and if the witnesses, whose veracity, sincerity and competence we do not doubt, are here this week saying it is not. It behoves the committee to try to fill the gap, bridge the divide or do something.

Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent)
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I welcome Lieutenant Colonel King and his team. It is great to have people in military uniform before the committee. Perhaps they can fill in the gaps. I think ten years ago it would have been unheard of, frowned upon and deemed to be completely unacceptable to have people in military uniform before a committee. It might give us a glimpse into what Lieutenant Colonel King mentioned about why there is no or little consultation with RACO or PDFORRA. It is as though they are not full citizens or they are unworthy of the norms of workplace relations. It is an industrial relations issue. The lieutenant colonel is a law man. There are hints of civil rights in the idea that military people are not treated appropriately. We should be strong about it. It does not cost anything for the Department to pick up the phone to PDFORRA or RACO and ask to run something by them and ask what their thoughts on an issue might be. It costs nothing and it is a basic professional courtesy that should be extended. It is clear from what we are hearing that cultural change is required at three levels, political, departmental and military levels. Unfortunately, we only have a report on the military level because a set of circumstances were engineered so that the political and departmental levels would not be assessed from a cultural point of view. Those are my opening remarks.

The budget will be announced this day next week. I would be grateful to hear the team's thoughts on what needs to be in the budget next Tuesday to make things better and bearable in the Defence Forces. What would they need to see?

Last week we heard that there will be a new high level implementation plan for the Commission on the Defence Forces. Although the commission reported 19 months ago, we are only getting the high-level implementation plan now. What needs to be in the plan and what does not need to be in it? I take on board the delegation's views on the meaningless words, "commence", "evaluate", "develop", "explore", "progress". They are all waffle words. They are managerial spin designed to mislead rather than inform. What needs to be in the high-level implementation plan, HLIP and what do the witnesses not want to see in it?

The witnesses cannot comment on operations or at least they are not supposed to. However, they can certainly comment on health and safety. I am no pilot but from what happened last week, when only one helicopter was available in the entire country to do a take down of a vessel off the Cork coast, does not sound right to me. It could be argued that only half a helicopter was available as it was tasked with a specific purpose in Athlone and had to be re-rolled, repurposed, re-tasked and relaunched. These risks are not theoretical risks. We lost the Dauphin helicopter in 1999 in Tramore. Four people were killed. It was the same story with the Coast Guard four or five years ago in Mayo. That is a major health and safety issue for Defence Forces personnel. I would be grateful for the witnesses' thoughts on that.

Housing is a massive issue. It is the number one issue in the country at the moment. The Defence Forces have loads of land. They have provided family housing in the past. They provide a small amount of housing already. What is RACO's view on military housing for military personnel? Should we be looking at it?

I take on board the witnesses' views on strength. We hear this and that has been done, but the bottom line is the outcome. The numbers continue to fall. An Garda Síochána has dropped below 14,000 members. It should have 15,000. The country is up in arms. How could this possibly happen? An Garda Síochána is down 1,000 people. From what the witnesses said, the Defence Forces should be at a strength of 11,500 so they are down 4,000 regulars and 3,000 reservists. That is 7,000 personnel and no one seems to care. The fact that 1,000 gardaí are missing in action, so to speak, is having a detrimental effect on justice. I can only imagine what effect being down 4,000 regular troops and 3,000 reservists is having on the Defence Forces. Where do the witnesses see the strength figures in 12 months? Are there any projections? Is there a plan? Are there any targets in the defence apparatus? We heard the word "stabilising". I agree with Deputy Carthy that if you send a team out to draw a match it will lose. We are even talking about stabilising the national herd and stabilising is code for reducing. I am keen to get RACO's view on that.

The communications and information services, CIS, corps personnel is an outrageous anomaly. Approximately three years ago, we spoke in this committee about that the National Cyber Security Centre, NCSC. It was a basket case three years ago, but it has been completely turned around. I always give credit where it is due. In fairness to the Government, it has doubled the headcount, doubled the budget and provided a proper premises and now it is an exceptional place to work. The pay rates for technical staff have now been increased. If it can be done for the NCSC, why can it not be done for the Defence Forces? The cyberattack on the HSE was a wake-up call. It was the epiphany moment for cyberdefence and cybersecurity. What happened last week off the Cork coast should be a wake-up call for maritime security and resources should be allocated accordingly.

I agree with Senator Joe O'Reilly about the pensions issue. An emergency measure was introduced in 2013 because the troika seized our national reserve fund of €20 billion so we had no money. There has rightly been a move for pay restoration in the past decade. I agree with Senator O'Reilly that there are now grounds to looks at pension restoration. It is the same principle. If we want people to stay, we need to have the appropriate pension arrangements in place. I would be grateful for RACO's views on that.

What does RACO want to see in the budget next week and in the HLIP? Were there any health and safety issues with the operation last week? Will the witnesses comment on housing and where they see the strength of the Defence Forces in 12 months? Are there grounds for a national cybersecurity-type template to be applied to the CIS corps, especially from a cyberdefence point of view? Will they comment on pensions restoration? That is important. We are keen to publish pay per annum but pay per hour is the metric we should be using. I suspect that if the numbers were calculated correctly that pay per hour would be below the minimum wage, depending on the rank.

I thank the Chair and I thank the delegation again.

Mr. Conor King:

Should I answer the questions in turn?

Mr. Conor King:

I thank Senator O'Reilly for his questions. He Senator mentioned the working time directive. It is worthy of repetition because it is an extremely important retention initiative. We have come to the table, we have done our work and done our research, and we are looking for a bit of certainty for members to enable the organisation to retain them and to do well for the organisation. We always come with optimism and with a constructive attitude and approach.

On our members' euro, we brought in people from German, from Sweden, from the Garda and from the legal profession. We ran an entire two-day conference in Cork devoted to the implementation of the working time directive and brought everybody from military management and from the Department of Defence who was interested to get things moving, and our members paid for that.

On the collective agreement and the implementation of the directive, the reason it was stalled for a number of years is because the Department of Defence, in particular, and the military leadership were worried it would have an impact on operations, and then all of a sudden a European Court of Justice ruling, called the Obrambo judgment, came out from Slovenia. That judgment basically said that a number of areas can be deemed out of scope of the directive. That gave carte blanchefor our leadership and our management to say we can do that too. Instead of comparing ourselves to Germany and the UK, all of a sudden we are comparing ourselves to Slovenia. Never before has that happened. It was a new one on us. That meant they were free to come into discussions knowing they could legally rule a number of things out of scope. It is not that they had to but they could choose to do so.

What we need is a collective agreement that does not deem unnecessary operations and training out of scope and that looks after members in terms of certainty, time off, etc. Otherwise, if something is brought in through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in a heavy-handed way and it does not meet the needs of members in terms of recruitment and retention, it will be a catalyst for further departures. I am not trying to be pessimistic here. I am trying to be realistic because we owe our members a degree of realism and truth. That is our job.

In relation to the retired members of the Permanent Defence Force, I would have covered that response for Deputy Stanton. We have heard the first-line Reserve is a fantastic means of augmenting the Permanent Defence Force. We should be making the pathway to join the first-line Reserve a lot easier for people who are retiring.

Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)
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The first-line Reserve being you. It should work that way.

Mr. Conor King:

Absolutely. As for the budget next week, it is difficult. It is not like supermarket sweep. I cannot go in and ask for exactly what I want, but there are things that are needed, such as the patrol duty allowance. I do not know what the figure is. Mr. O'Mearain has tried to quantify what it takes to double crew the ships as per the level of ambition in the Commission on the Defence Forces. Nobody could disagree with the fact that a reasonable request is the same as and no more than what is received by those in other State agencies which are seagoing. If that is not in the budget next week, that tells our members there is no urgency in solving the retention crisis in the Naval Service.

What we are not trying to convey here is pessimism. What we are trying to convey is a serious concern that every single day we see friends of ours leaving the organisation. I see my members, who are anxious and stressed, double- and treble-jobbing, going home on a Friday thinking already about Monday because they know they have several jobs to do. Every decision that is made by a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, NCO, or anybody with a degree of leadership responsibility is made in the knowledge that he or she has to compromise and give up something to do something else. What ball will drop if I pick this one up? That is no way for anybody to work. That is what the reduction of numbers in the Defence Forces has brought upon our members' heads. It is not a good way to do business. The Commission on the Defence Forces told us in 2022 that urgent remedial action was required. Forgive us if we look at an early action to be completed within six months of a Government decision in July 2022, six months passed in December 2022 and it is now October 2023. That does not convey a sense of urgency to anybody with any degree of intelligence.

On the budget next week, I cite patrol duty allowance. We are trying to induct numbers. The Tánaiste and Minister for Defence has said we need a radical approach to recruitment and we can see the prioritisation of recruitment over retention because there are pathways to recruitment but it is all on our members all the time. I want to see a specialised instructor allowance in the budget next week for members who are working 60- or 70-hour weeks bringing in cadets, recruits and apprentices. That is what I want to see. I cannot come with a shopping list, but those are two obvious ones. If some sort of guarantee or projection in the budget was made for the supplementary pension for those recruited post 2013, that would be a seismic change for the Defence Forces in terms of retention.

To become an employer of choice, there are things we can do. Deputy Stanton talked about retention bonuses. We have costed that. The Department has it. We do not know whether the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform has it. No one will engage with us on these issues. These were issues we sold to our members in relation to the acceptance of the high-level implementation plan, Strengthen our Defence Forces, which had, as its tag line, to make the Defence Forces an employer of choice. We know what is needed. We just need to implement it.

On health and safety, we will not comment on operations but we will comment on health and safety. I have touched on the stress and anxiety people are undergoing when they have to make decisions to drop one ball to run with the other. Many of our activities, to use that word, are one person deep.

Without one person, one aircraft or one platform, the operation does not go ahead. This has to do with largely human factors, involving staff from pilots, ship captains and engineers to engine-room artificers and even chefs and medics. A Naval Service ship generally will not go to sea if one person is ill or otherwise indisposed.

Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent)
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There are no substitutes on the bench. Even a GAA team has substitutes on the bench but Mr. King is saying the Defence Forces has none.

Mr. Conor King:

We know that we need 9,500 people to do what we are currently doing, and we are told we need 11,500 to do the bare minimum. However, if we have 7,600, we know there is no redundancy. Rather, there is negative redundancy and no resilience. We are not dropping any balls here or putting anything down. In this regard, the introduction of the working time directive is so important because it will legally empower commanders on the ground to say they do not have the resources and cannot do the job. Then the decision will have to go back up the line rather than resorting to the can-do, make-do and muddle-through we see every single day in Óglaigh na hÉireann. The can-do attitude is what is killing us in terms of recruitment and retention. It should not be. The can-do attitude is an extremely positive element of our culture of which advantage has been taken, unfortunately.

With regard to housing, we made a submission on military housing to the Commission on the Defence Forces and those associated with the high-level implementation plan. Those submissions were not engaged with. They are a matter of public record and are on the website – not our website but the Government's. Consider what occurs in other military organisations. We inherited many of our structures from the UK armed forces, or the British Army, as it has been known. Housing is part of the X factor, the total benefits package. The provision of military housing does two things: it rewards people for military service and takes pressure off the rest of the nation regarding housing provision, taking people off the social housing list. That contributes to society as well in that you have a happy worker in the Defence Forces and one person off the housing list. The linkages exist.

Ms Amy Colclough:

Many other militaries use housing as part of their package. It is also part of a retention scheme because a house to live in is tangible and not an expense. Many of our soldiers commute long distances because they must live where they can afford to live. Military housing would reduce their fuel cost. It would be a major retention tool if we had it. It is one of those things that we used to have but which has slowly disintegrated.

Mr. Martin Ryan:

The next area that Deputy Barry asked about was our strength. He asked about where we see things in a year's time. Trends are trends, and the trajectory of the past couple of years has shown a net loss of around 500 per year. That is the worrying trend we are looking at.

We have already commented on how the language of stabilisation is used in expressing the current goal. It is not exactly inspiring, let us be honest, but it is a reality. We are talking about the lack of optimism here today, but the appraisal and views are honest-----

Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent)
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But that language is not being used for the Garda. It is trying to get back up to 15,000. The language is not being used in the National Cyber Security Centre, which is also seeking to increase its headcount. Therefore, how is it acceptable to speak about stabilisation in the Defence Forces when it is not acceptable in any other sector? How come the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications can seem to get money from the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform if it is seeking to increase the salaries in the National Cyber Security Centre? How come the Department of Justice can get an extra €10 million overnight for Garda overtime for O'Connell Street? Is it that those two line Departments are held in higher esteem than the Department of Defence?

Mr. Martin Ryan:

It goes back to the Chair's reference to the working time directive and the views that the Department of Defence is having difficulty with another Department, that the retirement age is the responsibility of another Department and that pay and allowances are the responsibility of another Department. I struggle to accept that. It is almost passing the buck to say we are doing our best but that other Departments have ultimate responsibility. It is not really for me to answer on Deputy Berry's point but if other Departments are having more success, it is probably a fair assessment. The patrol duty allowance is the obvious issue. It has been spoken about for the past several years. We have watched the Naval Service being further decimated through retirements and the tying up of ships, yet there has not been a sufficient level of urgency in addressing the issue as a stand-alone one.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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May I add to that? The Garda might be in a better position than RACO's members but we are dealing with a day on which there is industrial action. It is five years since the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland published its report. Part of the difficulty we see today is related to the failure to implement some of its recommended measures. It is now 18 months since the publication of the report of the Commission on the Future of the Defence Forces. There is a very real danger that the trajectory of this report will be the same as that of the report on policing in that, five years after its publication, we could still be talking about implementing its recommendations or having a debate. The answer regarding the working time directive and all the issues raised here on resourcing the Defence Forces speaks to the need to consider this matter as an all-of-government priority. It is the only way. The current Minister was Taoiseach less than eight months ago and is now the Tánaiste and the leader of one of the major parties in government. He is on record in the Dáil and at committees as having said he is prioritising this issue, yet it is not being addressed. Therefore, the only way we will see it addressed – the representatives can comment on this, or not if it is too political – is by considering it an all-of-government priority to have a Permanent Defence Force that is actually fit for purpose, for all the reasons this committee has talked about in great detail.

Mr. Martin Ryan:

We would have felt that the decision to have a commission on the Defence Forces and the publication of its report represented that commitment. This is what led to the greatest level of optimism in recent times, bearing in mind that we talk about a lack of optimism today. To say that many members hung their coats on the outcome in deciding whether to stay in the organisation would not be an understatement. That shows the trust we placed in the report and the implementation of its recommendations. The report was met with much fanfare when launched and was very much welcomed by the organisation, all told. Based on the information given, we all briefed our subordinates in a timely manner. Again, there was optimism that the future was looking good and that we were finally looking at a level of ambition. Ambition 2.5 was what was spoken of. The investment in capability and the investment in people seemed to be real. The early actions, once published, led to the optimism behind the belief that many of the key things would be delivered in the following six months. I have already spoken about the impact of reporting and 95% delivered in terms of the choice of language as opposed to what was actually felt on the ground. That is fine for reporting up, but the feelings on the ground when we read the material were despair and, to be quite honest, more cynicism.

On the impact on strength overall based on a net loss of 500 per year and the question of where we will be next year, it is a matter of the associated risk thereafter. We cannot comment on operations but it would appear that what happened last week was a timely reminder to everyone, including ourselves. We all felt a great sense of pride looking at the operation and the follow-on, but there would be questions with regard to risk in terms of how that operation had to be conducted.

Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent)
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I am not convinced that Ireland could mount a similar meagre operation in 12 months. Where is the point of no return? Where is the point at which the trend is irreversible? I believe we are approaching it. This is really serious. To double up on what Deputy Carthy said, not only should there be a whole-of-government approach but there should also be a whole-of-Parliament approach. National security is so fundamental that it is apolitical. Some societies preach a whole-of-society approach, so it should be non-political or apolitical, with everybody trying to improve things. My main concern is that in 12 months we will not be able to mount a similar already meagre operation.

Mr. Conor King:

I thank the Deputy. We are not here to grandstand or sensationalise; we are here looking for help.

We welcome the suggestion Senator O'Reilly made about oversight. It is important because we are seeing slippage in plans we were promised would be delivered. We went to our members and said to stick it out because the Commission on the Defence Forces was going to deliver for them. When it does not, people get a little disconsolate. We have a poor track record of implementation, from the White Paper on Defence to the Public Service Pay Commission high-level implementation plan. When we see the early actions, to be completed within six months, still not completed 14 months later, we have cause for concern.

The Deputy talked about cybersecurity and the communications and information services, CIS, officers. It is an outrageous anomaly that one third of our CIS technical officers are being paid appropriately. They are not valued. They have a sense of purpose and loyalty, but when they are not valued, that only lasts so long, especially when they are so highly trained and so needed in the State in both the private sector and public sector. That is really a glaring own goal.

Regarding the pay per hour, the Deputy hit the nail on the head. It is difficult to make a value judgment on the adequacy of rates of pay when you do not know how many hours your employees are working. That is shameful. It should not be the case. It should not be accepted that a member cannot go home to his or her wife, husband or child and say what his or her hourly rate of pay or working week is. The irony of it is that it is public knowledge that tenders have gone out for instructors in niche capabilities in the Defence Forces because of a failure to retain people who must have previous Defence Forces experience but who are being asked to come back in as contractors on multiples of the salaries of the people they are going to be working beside. They will have a defined working day and week and access to the working time directive. What sort of message does that send to the people who have stayed? We see the same thing replicated in the Air Corps with technicians, in the CIS corps and in the medical corps with locums and so on. We have obvious solutions for retention we really just need to implement.

Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent)
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I thank Mr. King for his candour. It is very much appreciated. It is great to get an honest appraisal of what is actually happening on the ground.

Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent)
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I have one small thing to say. I very much like the Chair's suggestion about writing to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. My fundamental question is always about the extent to which this committee is culpable for what is happening in the Defence Forces. We are the cross-party committee with oversight. What is the extent of our powers? We are not bystanders in the implosion of the Defence Forces, and if we are, then we are failing. I like the Chair's suggestion of involving the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. I wonder if we should invite it before us to discuss these specific issues. I am not sure whether it would be willing to come because it has its own shadow parliamentary oversight committee, but under the circumstances, with the national catastrophe, to quote the RACO delegation, that is unfolding before us and has been for the past five years, there are probably grounds to bring the Department in or at least say this is absolutely unacceptable and has to stop. I would be grateful for the Chair's thoughts or guidance on that.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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There is also the high-level steering board of the Commission on the Defence Forces chaired by the Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach and the implementation oversight group. We should maybe invite both of those before us shortly. They have direct responsibility for oversight too.

Tom Clonan (Independent)
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Unfortunately, I was at the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, but when I learned the witnesses were here today, I wanted to come in and express our gratitude and solidarity for what they did last week. It came at a very good time in that it showed all three services and their value to Irish society and our European partnerships. It also underscored some of the lack of investment. I will not go into the detail of that because the witnesses know more about it than I do. There is growing concern not just among those of us who have a particular interest in Óglaigh na hÉireann but more broadly, and there is growing awareness of the crisis the organisation is in. We would like to give support and assistance in whatever way we can. I thank the witnesses for their resilience in the face of those challenges. I know the feeling of not being valued is a breach of the social contract. I thank the Chair for letting me come in. I wanted to express that solidarity.

Mr. Conor King:

I thank the Cathaoirleach, his staff and all the members of the committee for their kind words and support. If we were not positive and optimistic, we would not be here. We would have given up a long time ago. The Defence Forces are a fixable organisation and we have the solutions to resolve the ongoing retention crisis. We want to work with the Department of Defence, military management, the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and anyone else who will help, because a lot of assistance is required and it will require consultation and engagement. It is never too late to change the habit of a lifetime. I again sincerely thank the committee for its indulgence.